NERRRRRRRRRRRRRD! vol. 37

GHOST RIDER 2: GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE 1
5/10 


Okay, so this Ghost Rider movie is invariably better than that Ghost Rider movie, but in the way that having diarrhea is better than having amoebic dysentery. sure, it's a torrent of watery excrement shredding your rectum, but at least it won't kill you.

so Nicolas Cage is back as our titular tit; the stunt-motorcyclist turned shrieking skeleton man. this time he called upon by a black french gun running wino priest (Idris Elba) to save a 12 year old boy from Mephistopheles (who is called "Roark" this time out. whatever). in exchange for protecting the child, the Order the Wino-Priest represents will lift the curse of the Ghost Rider from Cage.

what follows is vrooom vroooom, witty banter, some admittedly decent heavy metal looking imagery, Violante Placido being retarded amounts of gorgeous, and worst of all; introducing the idea of a FLAME THROWING URINARY TRACT and doing NOTHING with it. the plot is bascially Terminator 2, just swap out time-traveling robot assassins with white trash demons.except you don't care about what happens because the characters are mostly indestructible. Terminator was tough, but he could be destroyed, and John and Sarah were human, so they could be taken out with ease. when Blaze become Ghost Rider; there is NOTHING that can really stop him. realistically, he should be a villain, because then he would present a challenge that a protagonist would have to overcome. i'll give the movie credit for sort of alluding to that, but it needed to go deeper into that idea.. it's sort of like how they teased me with the idea of a FLAME THROWING URINARY TRACT and than did NOTHING with it.

so the problem lies in the source material, i'm afraid. Ghost Rider is very powerful... too powerful, which mean that he's just not a very interesting character, because he can pretty much do anything and defeat anyone. the image is undeniably cool, and as a supporting player he's fine, but he's barely interesting enough to carry his own book, and he's certainly not strong enough to carry an entire film. when he's just Johnny Blaze, that's when you sort of care, but once he's Ghost Rider, he's just a monosyllabic movie monster who whacks people with a chain that turns them into cigar ash and then teases me with the idea of a FLAME THROWING URINARY TRACT and than does NOTHING with it.

the Jekyl and Hyde/Wolfman dynamic... or even the Incredible Hulk.... that's how this should be played, but Ghost Rider seems so detached not only from his host, but from the events going on, that there is no real conflict. Blaze himself doesn't seem that tormented by his situation. he cracks jokes, hits on cute nurses etc, so you never feel for him. that's why he really should have been the villain. this guy who likes this thing flowing through him. this way, you could forgo any awkward attempts at making him sympathetic. honestly, Ghost Rider is a better villain than the villains in this movie. talk about some pathetic demons. okay, you're Mephisto. you can send an invincible cavalcade of hellish minions onto the world and take this kid with no problem. so what do you do? you send some Kirk Cameron looking douchehat and his handful of very-destructible mercenaries (who except for one, are about the least intimidating pudbags ever put on film) to snatch this child. you are aware that there is an insane spectre who can punch people into balls of fire walking the earth, right? okay, so they're all dead now. great. now you can ressurect them and give them grim reaper powers. alright... very good. lets do that to all of them? wait... so you're only gonna do it to one of them... AND it's the Kirk Cameron looking cuntlick. just ONE FUCKING GUY? i thought this child was important?  that's like teasing me with the idea of a FLAME THROWING URINARY TRACT and than do NOTHING with it.



don't mind me, kids... i'm just upset that they teased me with the idea of a FLAME THROWING URINARY TRACT and than did NOTHING with it.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 67

Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich All Promise To Ban Porn

 

yeah good luck with that.

i would be alarmed, but this is little more than yet another empty platitude that they have no real intention (or conceivable way) of backing up. it's just something that will get hyper-moral blowtards clapping and cheering for "the good old days" when there was no naked ladies corrupting our children through the mere sight of a flashed tit or a sweat-lacquered o-face.

oh wait... they've had some form of that since man had a cock and a moment of downtime.

you're never gonna stop people from jerking off. you may take away their Digital Playground DVDs, but they'll find something to fill that void, and then whatever that is will become the new pornography.

somewhat related; i went to the mall yesterday, and there were HUGE banners of this gorgeous blond in her underwear, shooting a hotel-room gaze across the entire compound. next to her was the nerve center; the food court, with little kids eating 2100 calorie macaroni burgers from the Cheesecake Factory. 

tell me... what's doing more damage?

Swoon Swoon You're a Balloon vol. 1

Sasha Grey

Please read my statement regarding the recent articles that stated I was donating to Read Across America. Most importantly, check out http://banninghistory.blogspot.com/

This is a sad attempt by a company I’ve never heard of to re-package and re-sell an outdated, previously-available scene, by touting it as one of my last scenes; nothing more than a cheap attempt to capitalize on the Read Across ...America controversy and my name. The real exploitation in the adult film business doesn’t happen on the set, it happens once the model releases are signed and companies make their distribution deals. While I don’t regret my former profession, I regret that this type of exploitation continues to thrive today. This isn't even newsworthy, but similar situations continue to happen to me and countless other performers.


Truthfully, I don’t know what to be more upset about: The fact that people are now mislead to believe I’m personally selling this movie with salacious marketing, or the fact that the NEA won’t take donations from this pathetic company. There’s little money for education in this beautiful country, and as a pro-education advocate, it’s heartbreaking to hear this. The NEA has denied that I am associated with them, which is correct. The 14-year-old program I was part of last November was also called Read Across America, which is where the confusion lies. However, nobody has cared enough to point that out, and instead pointed their fingers at me, making me the bad guy. The real story here should be that the regional non-profit Read Across America, Guest Reader Program that took place in Compton, CA is now defunct because of one lone disgruntled fan who harassed my parents, the school district, the media and me, for my involvement in such an important program. I think it’s sad that one person had enough time on their hands to inflict such an insurmountable amount of fear into an inner-city school district, causing the school to feel the need to lie about my presence and shut down the program altogether. It’s simply fascist.

Our educational system needs help. The Tucson Unified School District, for example, has banned a number of important books from their school system. Most of these books are rich in Chicano history. Here’s to hoping that we can bring education back to the forefront where it belongs.

Again, please take your time to check out http://banninghistory.blogspot.com/ and take a look at my video.

NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRD! vol. 36

Threats come to pass as DC finally launches prequels to Alan Moore's WATCHMEN 

grumble.

as long as there has been a Watchmen, there has been DC wanting to expand (cash in) on the book, turning it into a franchise.... the very thing Watchmen was meant to be the antithesis of. that being said, i can't even find the heart to be pissed about this. it's just such a shallow $ grab that it almost seems not worth being upset over. maybe i alleviated all the disgust i had at the idea of Watchmen being a "property" when that abysmal film came and went (now at your local K-Mart DVD budget bin), so this just doesn't phase me.

and all the prequels and Ultimate Edition DVDs and video game tie-ins will look up and shout "BUY US!"
...and i'll look down, and whisper ... "No". 

i have to admit... i am curious to see Azzarello do the Comedian and Rorschach (w/ Lee Bermejo! they're tricking me). that might be the one bright spot. but sunspots are bright, too... and they're not good for you.

more from the "creators"

...they i guess make a good point about Alan Moore's re-imagining of classic literary figures in books like League of Extraordinary Gentelmen and Lost Girls, but the key there is Moore did something DIFFERENT with those characters... took them to places they have never gone before, reconnecting them with their literary roots and exploring potentials that had never been touched on before he came along. can any of these creators say that they're going to be that daring with Moore and Gibbons' characters? i mean if they are, good for them... but i don't see it happening.

what made Watchmen stand out (in addition to most, if not all, of Moore's work) was that i was a story that had never been told about archetypal characters. the characters are ones we recognize, if only at a visual level, but they are put in situations we have never seen them (or characters like them) in before. That's what matters, not the adventures before or even after. before the events Moore laid out, they were just costumed crimefighters, their stories interchangeable with the myriad of others like them. the beauty of the book is that we don't need to see these characters on generic good vs. evil punchfests... we have the afterword of those fights, of an ever increasingly dangerous world and how they react with impotence, frustration, violence, aloofness, and madness when faced with newer, more deadly threats.

if these prequels have that depth, than great. but i feel like we're just gonna get more of the same... which is what Watchmen was not.