www.leefur.com

The best pilot you've never seen, this is a show from 1999 produced by Ben Stiller (who also briefly stars as a strip club DJ). Jack Black stars as Jack Austin, an astronaut on the run from NASA after a solar accident makes him the smartest man in the universe (but only when the sun is up). Owen Wilson plays the voice of his motorcycle, which fused with Jack's unemployed roommate in a misdirected ray-gun blast. Also starring is Ben Stiller's hot-as-hell, money-can-buy-anything wife, Christine Taylor, and Ron Silver as ... himself (the bad guy). So if you've got a half hour to kill, this is better than Grey's Anatomy or whatever you were just about to sit through...

Link (to large movie file)

Check out this clip supposedly showing some early test footage of effects for the in-production live-action Transformers flick, due out in 2k7 or so. Link

Kevin Smith, director of Clerks (and Mallrats, Dogma, Chasing Amy, etc) has decided to go back to what he does best - super low budget flicks with snappy dialogue. Check out a trailer for his upcoming sequel to the very, very excellent Clerks: link

I know what you're thinking: "When is Lee gonna give us his thoughts on King Kong already, sheesh!?" Rest easy now.

I saw King Kong last night. I saw the original 1933 King Kong the night before, and it added a lot to the experience last night. There are some wonderful little ties and callouts to the original.

The best thing about 1933's Kong was the pacing of the story; there was just never a dull moment as one thing led to another. There was always a new danger. 2005's Kong achieves this as well, but only for about the middle hour. There is an hour in there that is as much fun as you'll ever have at the movies. And it is this hour that makes me suggest you go see this flick.

As you may have heard, the first 45 minutes or so is quite slow. You can feel Peter Jackson stretching this into more of an epic, really trying to build up the characters in the story. Perhaps this misses the point that King Kong is really an action-adventure story. Or perhaps it is because of this effort that this incarnation of the movie holds up, that it doesn't feel like just an unnecessary special effects festival (which, in the end, it is).

Jackson wanted people at the theaters to feel what people seeing King Kong in 1933 felt - shock and awe. The problem is that in the 70 years since, we've become blinded by effects that make anything possible. Life-like dinosaurs? Check. Talking half-alien hobbits? Check. Despite this blindness, there are times when this King Kong made a theater of 300 people hold its collective breath with eyes wide in hopeful anticipation, and there were times when you could feel (and hear) a united reaction of "My God! What next?!" Jackson has achieved his goal here.

There is quite a bit of (expected) effort to humanize Kong, and quite effectively at that. This empathy is inherent in the Beauty and the Beast story, but truly brought to life by Kong's emotional presence and Naomi Watts' truly luminescent performance. It's great to see her headline a blockbuster; she deserves to be A-list, and she has arrived. Adrien Brody is serviceable, but Jack Black is a mis-cast. He's a brave choice from Jackson, but let's let this be Black's last non-comedic attempt.

In short, go see 1933's King Kong masterpiece. Then go see 2005's King Kong recreation. Hit the bathroom before showtime, though.

Two days later, I'm still laughing thinking back on it. Anyone who's not too prissy should treat yourself to this flick. Seriously.

A little sample (this is shown in the movie too)

(Thanks for the link, Spider) 

I've seen a bunch of movies recently that are all 7-8 on a 10-point scale; all very very much worth a looksee - Grizzly Man, March of the Penguins, Batman Begins, Murderball, and finally The Aristocrats.

The Aristocrats was HILARIOUS (and I hate using all-caps, at that). It is basically a documentary about one of the most well-known jokes told amongst comedians. Nearly every comic you've probably ever heard of is involved in the flick, telling their version of the joke and helping to dissect why it's funny. The joke, see, is like jazz; the framework is set, but there's freedom to riff ad nauseum. So let's try it! Weee!

**** THIS IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART OR TASTE ****

First I'll do a version of the joke:

A guy walks into a talent agent's office and says "I have an act with my family - the likes of which no one has ever seen - and we're looking for representation."

"Tell me a bit about your act" the agent replies.

"Well, I come out in tux, with my wife in a beautiful gown. My wife walks over to me, unzips my fly, pulls out my cock and begins to lovingly suck me off. While she's doing this, I'll pull up at her dress to reveal that she's not wearing any panties. She takes a shit on the floor, while still blowing me, mind you. My wife is very talented.

"Meanwhile, we bring out a Jew and a Negro, each tied to a crucifix. A couple minutes later we bring out a full-fledged member of the Ku Klux clan, who has a 12 foot bull whip. With malicious intensity, he begins whipping the Negro, who cries out in pain with every lash. Then we bring out an actual 4th generation direct decendent of Hitler, in an authentic 1939 Hitler Youth uniform. He uses a lighter and a squirt gun filled with sulphuic acid to slowly burn the arms and testicles of the Jew, who's cries of pain meld with the Negroes into anadmittedly dischordant chorus of torture."

"At this point, my children come out on stage. My daughter balls up a bit of my wife's shit and begins spreading it on my cock. My wife is still blowing me, and the taste of the shit, and the smell of the corn in it, is just too much for her and she begins to vomit violently, splashing off my midsection into a puddle on the floor. Our dog comes up and begins lapping up the vomit pile while my son lifts up the tail and begins quickly sodomizing the pup.

"By now, my daughter has slid my pants off and gone around back and begun tounging my asshole. Having not showered in three days, and with a visible layer of shit and ass-cheese, this is too much for her delicate young pallette to deal with and she also begins vigoruosly vomitting, generally on the first few rows of the audience.

"The dog at this point makes his way over to my squatting daughter and works his head under her skirt and begins licking her pussy. My son come around behind my daughter, pushes her onto all fours, and begins raping her unprepared ass. As she screams out in pain, I turn around and jerk off all over her face. The cum drips down onto the stage, mixing with the vomit and the blood pooling under her delicate rear end.

"I sit down in the mixture and then lift my legs up by my head so the dog can lick my balls and ass clean as my wife jams my daughter's head into her pussy, forcing her to eat out her shit-stained kootch. Then my son pulls out, walks around and punches my daughter in the face, and starts fucking my wife. My son, mind you, is hung like a rhino.

"Meanwhile, I stand up and come around to my sobbing daughter's rear and begin fist fucking her pussy until I rip out part of her uteral lining with my unclipped fingernails. Then the dog comes by and begins raping my daughter until she passes out from the pain, resting her angelic face in the blend of blood, shit, cum, vomit, and uteral flesh chunks on the stage. This of course doesn't stop the dog.

"Finally, I shove my cock in my wife's ass, and soon the dog comes by and starts fucking my wife's mouth. With all three of us now inside her, my son generally cums first, and the dog next. I wait until at least my son's cum has dried, scrape it up into pieces like dried snot, and shove my whole cum-laden fist in her mouth until she vomits on herself as I pull out and cum on the dog."

The agent is dumbstruck. "Wow, that's like nothing I've ever heard of! What do you call such an act?"

The man smiles gently, then strikes a proud pose, hands on hips, chin up, and proclaims "We're The Aristocrats!"

See? Get it? The punchline sucks. But the point of the joke is the build-up, and the construction of it means that you're going for contrast against their name of "The Aristocrats", so the more vile, the better. So I've taken my turn, now you take yours. If you want to write a whole joke like this, please do. If you just wanna throw out some brainstorming ideas ("hey, what if the wife was pregnant, and we got the dog good and angry and shoved up in the wife, and the dog came out snarling with the fetus in its teeth?"), that works too. Wanna add a grandma or grandpa or uncle or farm animal? Go nuts!

Lovingly,

Lee

As promised, loyal readers, I went to the local Landmark theater and watched March of the Penguins last night. It's a National Geographic film, and if you've ever seen anything NG has ever done, then you pretty much know what to expect here. Absolutely beautifully shot, this documentary tells the amazing story of how these penguins annually trek, mate, and care for their young.

In a run-on sentence, tribes from all over Antartica trek as much as 70 miles (despite their characteristic waddle) to a central spot where every single one of them was born, and then the thousands of females each lay a large, single egg which they pass to the male who braves the dryest, coldest, windiest winter on earth, not eating for over 4 months while the females return to the sea to fill their bellies and return to nurture the newly hatched young so the males can trek that 70 miles back to sea, fighting starvation, to refuel. The couple take turns on this until the (obviously adorable) chick is strong enough to be left behind.

Anyway, this phenomena is truly, well, phenomenal and the sound and sights of it are captured with truly unbelievable detail and emotion. At the end of the day, this is really just a Discovery channel show, but it's one of the best you'd ever see. Worth checking out, if only to see how harsh and incredible this planet really is. 

Fuckin clever bastard, I am, with that headline.

Anyway, I'm going to see this tonight. Looks like it could be a beautiful documentary on the ridiculous mating struggle of Anartctic penguins. Hmm. Allow me to excerpt:

After a long summer of feasting, their bodies stately and plump, the emperor penguins of Antarctica begin to feel, toward autumn, a need to march inland to the breeding grounds "where each and every one of them was born." They are all of a mind about this, and walk in single file, thousands of them, in a column miles long. They all know where they are going, even those making the march for the first time, and when they get there, these countless creatures, who all look more or less the same to us, begin to look more or less desirable to one another. Carefully, they choose their mates.

This is not a casual commitment. After the female delivers one large egg, the male gathers it into a fold of his abdomen, plants his feet to protect the egg from the ice below, and then stands there for two months with no food or water, in howling gales, at temperatures far below zero, in total darkness, huddled together with the other fathers for warmth. The females meanwhile, march all the way back to the sea, now even more distant, to forage for food, which they will bring when the spring comes, if they know it must. When the females return to the mass of countless men, they find their mate without error and recognize the cries of chicks they have never seen.

Long except, I know. Anyway, read that, then watch the trailer. And here's the link to the review.

Fantastic Four opened with $56 million? We, the American people, gave a movie who's big line was "Let's not fight" "No, let's" $56 million of our money? DaaahhhhH!!!

This was exactly what it should be - a summer blockbuster with tons of aliens, tons of explosions, and Tom Cruise. I actually was able to ignore his crappiness, which says something. The movie was thoroughly satisfying, the effects were awesome because they didn't feel too much like effects, and Dakota Fanning is just amazing for a 3 year old or whatever. When's she gonna get legal, anyway?

So anyway, go check it out. As long as you're willing to put money in Spielberg's and Cruise's pockets. Oh, and the end kinda sucks. So you have that to look forward to. Heh.