Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Forget Maui

In this next piece, I will demonstrate how the 1996 action film The Rock missed out on what could have produced an iconic catchphrase in cinema history, through the changing of only one word of dialogue.
 
For those of you who have no idea what movie I'm talking about (if you're a man, you would have to be part of the 1%), I'm talking about THE fucking ROCK. Although I first saw this movie before I was able to create any sort of critical judgments, I still love it just as much as I did during my prepubescent years. Just look at the title. It's probably one of the most manly approaches to a movie title ever. I have no doubt that in the first draft of writing, this film was called The Cock. It's basically action-dude-brofest-deluxe. Kind of like Predator, but with more shirts and less muscles.

The first half of the movie establishes Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Nicholas Cage) as an engaged chemist pussy that has to convince John Mason (Sean Connery), who has been incarcerated for decades, to help in leading a special forces team into Alcatraz in order to stop a squad of U.S. Marines from engaging in chemical warfare on San Fransisco. It's acknowledged right from the start that John Mason is pretty much a huge salty bad ass who quantifies winners as those who "go home and fuck the prom queen". However, Mason does know the whereabouts of a microfilm which apparently contained all of the dirty secrets the U.S. government was hiding from over the last half-century.

The majority of the movie really centers on the dynamics and tensions between Mason's dick and Goodspeed's vagina, as they struggle together throughout the complex avoiding exlplosions and Marines. During the final minutes of the film, after deactivating the weapons and wasting the bad guys, Goodspeed and Mason share a moment together before parting ways(this can be seen below at around 4:30 in the clip). Mason recommends a place for him and his new wife to spend their honeymoon, which is somewhere in Kansas. Goodspeed replies "I was thinking Maui", to which Mason shakes his head, puts a piece of paper containing the resting place of the microfilm, and says "Forget Maui". 

I absolutely believe that this is a wasted piece of dialogue that could have been solidified into pop culture if he had just replaced "Forget" with "Fuck". Think about it: "Naa.....Fuck Maui". It just makes absolute sense in this scenario. Here we are, in the final moments of one of the best action movies of that decade, during maybe the only sweet moment in the entire 136 minutes of the film. A swear word hasn't been said in the longest consecutive stretch since the opening trailers, and here we have two grown men about to part ways after battling incredible odds together. Wouldn't it be just amazing to throw "Fuck Maui" in there just to cap off the character of John Mason? It's literally the last line Connery has in the film, and it really could have been so much more effective and true to his character if he just dropped one last bomb. The entire film has established that he's an asshole, so why try to hide it at the last minute?


You can almost hear him say it in the clip even. In fact, if you mute the clip entirely, it looks like he says "Fuck Maui". It really would have just been the perfect ending to the character's story, seeing as we know that he's now presumed dead and will probably continue a life of illegitimate bad assery.  

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Command + Shift + 3


I was laying in bed the other night, blast-eye awake from drinking a coffee just an hour before, streaming some movies online. Shawshank Redemption came on, so I couldn't resist watching the entire thing. 

Right towards the end of the movie, when Red (Morgan Freeman) is released from prison and lives a normal life bagging groceries, I noticed something really funny. He was wearing an apron that was an eerily similar color to one that I'd seen before. A quick screen capture, a little Photoshop, and voila..

Thursday, September 8, 2011

"we was like peas and carrots"

Usually before I go to bed I stream a movie online to help me fall asleep faster. 
On this particular day I happened to notice something hilarious right before I fell asleep. 
Forest Gump was on. I usually favor falling asleep to things I've seen a hundred times. It kind of helps to not be distracted when you're trying to get to la la land. However, right as I was dozing off, the feed lagged right on an amazing frame of the movie:
young Forest getting smoked in the face by a rock! YES! It stayed still on this frame for about a minute.


Now normally this part bums me out because of those asshole Southern kids and their rock-throwings, but this screen capture was just too good to be true. I think I was a nanosecond away from capturing the rock itself. On top of that, the photo is just amazing: Forest's jacked face and Jenny's nonchalant gaze into the distance. I couldn't help but add "peas" and "carrots" to the photo.

Is this funny to anybody else besides me? I may submit it to Reddit. Maybe even as a .gif sequence.

Friday, January 7, 2011

a whole new world

this may be one of the only really funny things I ever do, and I'm cool with that.

Friday, December 31, 2010

Happy New Year from the Schmidt Kids

Watch the magic as I, once again, trick my sister into thinking we're taking a photo - in video mode. I've watched it almost 100 times I think.
May the new year bring happiness and success to you all.
Cheers!

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

cravings



Sometimes all I really feel like doing is watching Boyz in the Hood. I honestly get a craving to watch this once every two weeks, just below The Last Waltz and Citizen Kane.

I consider it a small masterpiece. A little slice of 90's Americana set in the South side of Los Angeles. Everyone's performances are unique and memorable, and there's just enough gritty storyline and character development that it keeps your eyes peeled to the screen from start to finish.

Additionally, it has easily the greatest movie dad in cinematic history. Furious Styles (played by Lawrence Fishburn), is a take-no-shit kind of dad that'll give you "rubbers", eat admiring neighbours' bbq'd ribs, fix your fade, and still pay the bills and love you by the end of the day. If I were up for adoption and Furious Styles walked into the room, I'd be like "Shit yeah, take me home daddyo". Even Rotten Tomatoes gave Furious the top honor in their Fathers Day Special called "Top 5 Movie Dads of All Time" click on it to watch.

Plus, everytime Ice Cube's character is on screen he has an Olde E in his hand (except for the flash back to when they were kids at the beginning). So gangster. In fact, I might host a forty party in my house in the future where we do nothing but drink OE and watch Boyz in Hood quietly and let Furious teach us about sex ed. Shit yeah.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

i knew it sounded familiar

I saw Avatar for the second time last night. Now although the movie is literally a cinemagraphic milestone, the plot is absolutely nothing to write home about. Although at first I thought it was a direct copy of The Last Samurai, somebody else pinned the plot on the head.


Monday, December 28, 2009

"YTV, pull that shit down!"


Mike and I recorded the Basement Edition of Talkin' Schmidt last night. The topics include:

BK: Lego vs. Legos , Excess Disney Sequels, Useless Hand-held Phone Tactics, Backpackers, Call of Brutal Children

Andy
: Matilda and Satanic Messages, Ex Girlfriend w/ Boyfriend Etiquette, Anonymous Donors, Vegetable Commercial Motifs / Dad vs. Dolphins

Collectively
: Specific Souvenir Requests, Chicken Soup for the Damaged Readers
Soul

It was all filmed quite quickly and efficiently. Seeing as we haven't filmed an episode in almost a year, the topics flowed rather smoothly. The Crown Royal didn't hurt things either. Christmas time will do that to you


Saturday, December 19, 2009

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Robin Shouldn't

I always knew they'd make a sequel to Gladiator. I just don't know why they'd call Maximus by the name "Robin Hood". Russell can't touch Errol Flynn with a ten foot dick.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

rosebud

For whatever reason, over the past few months the only thing I've felt like doing in my spare time is cooking and watching Citizen Kane. I have over one hundred movies in my house and I only ever feel like watching that one.

Aside from the incredibly gorgeous camera work, as well as the quality of the black and white footage, the film almost sounds like an album. I find when I'm cooking at home and watching say, a kung fu movie, I become more distracted with the visuals and end up burning my pork fried rice because I've been staring at the screen. However in the case of Citizen Kane, the movie relies far more on the narratives presented than the shots themselves. The script is slick and concise, which is why I could probably listen to the film on an mp3 player, if such a thing was possible.

If any of you readers have never seen the film, contact me and I'll run to your house to watch it with you, with a bottle of wine (I say that because most of the readers of this blog are femmes).


Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Raging Bull

Okay.
Everybody listen.
Scratch that.
Everyone in a band, or collective, listen.
Take the advice from ?uestlove (one of the greatest drummers/influences/aficionados/impacts on modern music today, from possibly one of the best hip hop groups of all time) and listen to him.
Sunday is Band Day.
Above any politics amongst your group, Sunday is Band Day.
Lately, Hue's has been Monday.
We drink tequila and freestyle.
I talk about cooking for the band, but the tequila is usually the deciding point.
Listen to ?uestlove.


Thursday, October 1, 2009

second thoughts

I just wrote, and deleted, a lengthy piece on ego-masturbation.

After realizing that it might offend some people, and that it was mostly just ranting and raving, I decided to keep it to myself.

Now, I know all about expressing yourself and why not to hold anything back, but some things are just meant to be kept in the old pumpkin I guess.

A lot of it came from watching American Psycho this afternoon I think, except when Patrick Bateman got mad, he killed people.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

"i'm a rude dude, but i'm the real deal"


John Bean filmed a short documentary on me the other day. It pretty much revolved around my sordid (and colorfully narrated) past with Ryerson. For some reason, I've always loved being interviewed. Especially when it's something I'm comfortable talking about, and when they let me swear (unlike Rogers cable).

Speaking of swearing, lately I've been analyzing the language you and I all use. More specifically, the cute little sayings we just roll off the tongue without questioning the meaning, or the origin (I got a book off Glen a while back on the origins of everyday sayings - I'll lend it to you). I've been thinking about the power of our language, and how most of us subconsciously blabber on without understanding what it is we're actually saying. In reality, the thought of misusing words and phrases scares the shit out of me, because we are only as good as the language we use. Otherwise you're doing yourself the fine favor of misrepresenting your own intelligence.

I'd have to say my big interest in language came from the work by George Carlin. After listening to his work (I'd rather not call it a comedy routine, because his stand up was more lecture than anything), I began comprehending the language we use, and why. Carlin had that really sharp way of speaking, which can be drawn from his love excessive swearing, and hatred towards modern euphemisms and soft language that conceal the truth (his speech on the transformation from "shell shock" to "post-traumatic stress disorder" is a classic example). I listen to his tapes on a daily basis because of this.

Below is Modern Man, something which I consider to be one of the greatest stand up rants of all time. The amount of culturally relevant sayings he crams into this short segment is unbelievable. I can probably recite about a quarter of it, which isn't bad considering it's really hard to remember it all.


Saturday, March 28, 2009

RealD

Things I will do with my Saturday:

a) For starters, I don't smoke weed very often, but some occasions just call for it. For example, in about 20 minutes, we are going to get blunted so badly and then go see Monsters vs. Aliens in IMAX 3D. Honestly, if you've never tried this it's the best thing ever. The feeling is worth way more than the $15. If I knew these movies looked that amazing under the influence of mary-jane I'd probably pay something around $45. So yeah, that's that.

b) From there I'll probably come home and throw down an amazing meal after racking up the biggest bill ever at Metro yesterday. This was probably due to the fact that I was using a shopping cart and I just had the urge to fill that thing. That cart was also a first in three years.

c) Later tonight I'll probably juggle between a party at Cheese's place and a party at this cute Jewish girls house who I met last week. Thankfully, they live across the street from each other. How sweet is that? Good old Baldwin Village.


Sunday, March 1, 2009

i'm still thinking billy madison



Basically, Mike and I trying to figure out what to watch as we cycle through endless binders of bad movies.