Fun with rubber genitalia

Yesterday I watched Antichrist, directed by self-proclaimed biggest director in the world Lars von Trier, and I guess it's an OK movie, but only if you think about it as a sleazy exploitation/horror movie with a really boring hour-long exposition. The film opens with a scene in which Willem Dafoe is sticking it to Charlotte Gainsbourg as their little boy jumps out the window. You can tell that it's a really good and artistic film by how everything is in black and white and in slow motion and with something out of an opera or some such thing in the background, and also by how you get to actually see Willem Dafoe's cock sliding in and out of Charlotte Gainsbourg's snatch. I was so relieved to find out later that they used doubles for that shot, because the thought of those two having real sex on camera is something that could have easily scarred me for life. What follows this is about an hour in which the couple mourns the death of their little brat, which is pretty ridiculous considering that they live in a world where you can create babies pretty much for free, so if one gets smooshed you can easily just make another one, no big deal. For some reason the wife gets so messed up by the whole thing that she has to be hospitalized and put on psychiatric drugs, something which the husband, who is a professional psychiatrist, doesn't really approve of. In order to help her recover he takes her to a crappy little cabin in the middle of the woods, where they argue and do stuff with no pants on and have creepy encounters with various animals, like a mommy deer with a dead baby deer stuck to her ass, a dying baby crow who gets his head bitten off by a hawk, and best of all, an adorable talking fox! Still, as entertaining as watching a fox eat his own bloody guts may be, I was still pretty bored and very anxious to get to the only reason why I started watching this thing in the first place. Gutted animals are all well and good, but I've seen worse at my local supermarket. Please, I begged the movie, please get to the good stuff already and show me something gross that isn't Charlotte Gainsbourg's naked body. When the good stuff finally came I was pretty exhausted, but it was all so hilarious that I almost didn't mind. After a couple of days of psychotherapy the crazy broad finally snaps and crushes her husband balls with something big and heavy, something that undoubtedly happens pretty often with chicks who stay off their meds for too long. She then gives his unconscious body an incredibly sexy handjob which results in him ejaculating blood all over her clothes. Next she drills a hole through his leg and bolts him to a heavy grindstone, so he'll never be able to leave her. Talk about clingy! The really creepy bit, however, is when she finally goes completely mental and slices her own clit completely off with a rusty pair of scissors! Now that's just good wholesome fun for the entire family! Lars von Trier annoys the poop out of me because he's obviously got a really scary torture porn movie somewhere inside him, and yet he insists on making what he considers to be 'art'. Pfft. Whenever I want to look at art I just open the cupboard and pick out at an old can of chickpeas, and if that isn't art, then I don't know what is.

Willem Dafoe has a surprisingly nice butt

When I first read about the VJ mutilation scene in a review of Antichrist I was pretty pissed because I felt it was a terrible spoiler, but then I realized that if I didn't know about it, I probably wouldn't have any interest in watching it at all. What's more important is that the scene was created in such a realistic way that if you're not fully prepared for it you may end up soiling yourself. So in a way I'm sort of happy that the film critic for Maariv is such a dick. And if I used to think that my life sucks, at least now I know that some people have it even worse, like, say, the members of the effects team that was in charge of reproducing Charlotte Gainsbourg's crotch in latex. *shudders*

Turn it off, it'll rot your brain cells!

Last night I watched Terrorvision on MGM, and I'm happy to report that it happens to be one of the coolest horror/sci-fi '80s comedies I've seen in a long time. Terrorvision is a rather insane B-movie from 1986 about a big scary monster that accidentally gets zapped down to earth and starts eating everything. See, on their native planet monsters are pretty common household pets, but when they start mutating they have to be disposed of and blasted into space. This particular monster gets dumped into the Puttermans' newly installed satellite dish, materializes inside the house through their Television sets and basically eats them all one by one. Now, it doesn't really make much sense in a movie that is clearly not meant for small children, but the main character is an annoying little blonde boy. This typical pedo bait is obviously extremely disturbed and is already on medication, so when he starts talking about monsters nobody really gives a shit, as is often the case with children in horror movies. His parents are pretty awesome role models, the kind that easily shape you into a fine young American with serious impulse control issues. You see, they like to have icky, hairy '80s sex with other couples of similar interests. They even bring one of these couples into their home, the female of which looks pretty awesome in a bikini and the male is a greasy Ricardo Montalbán-type dude, who is very Greek and very into Greek culture. That means he's a manly man. A man's man. The kind of man's man who can take in like a man. And probably give it like one too, I suppose. That part was a little bit confusing, because they didn't say anything about his girlfriend being a muff muncher, so what were the girls supposed to do while the Greek guy is plowing Mr. Putterman's big hairy ass? I guess the chick could have tried to get it on with the kid, as she's pretty much expressed her interest in him from the moment she laid her eyes on the little fucker, but I don't think the mom would've been too entertained. Then again, who knows. Yup, it's just that kind of movie. There's also a sister, sporting an insanely gigantic '80s hairdo, and her borderline retarded metalhead boyfriend. Finally, there's the grandfather, who is a conspiracy theory enthusiast with his very own bomb shelter and lizard tail jerky business (you cut off its tail, and it just grows a new one! it's the perfect business strategy!). All the adults get eaten one after the other, but the monster has this really neat trick where it can extend the severed heads of its victims on a these slimy, meaty stalk things and make them talk! Once the grown-ups are gone, the three kids manage to befriend the creature and teach him all about the three most important things in Earth culture: food, music and TV, all of which seem to fascinate it. There's also this giant tittied Vampira-style TV host called Medusa, who has snakes for hair and can turn any man rock-hard in an instant, which is no small feat considering her mess of a face. Almost the entire movie is set at the Puttermans' home, which is a colorful and tastelessly decorated horror as only the '80s could produce, indoor swimming pool and Roman statue of a chick with water spouting out her nipples included. And the theme song is pretty hilarious too! It truly is a crime that Terrorvision was never released on DVD, even though the assholes at MGM still hold the copyrights for it. The world would be a so much better place if every household in it could have a copy at hand.

Cute!!!

In other news: earlier this week I went to see Avatar again, and it was even awesomer than the first time. I desperately need to see it again. It's pretty fraking amazing to see how many people are still going to see it, even after two weeks, and especially in a country where sci-fi movies usually bomb. I really hope there won't be any sequels after all, because using the technology to do the same thing all over again instead of trying something completely different sounds like a pretty stupid idea. Of course, if it'll mean that in a couple of years the original Avatar will be shown in theaters once again then I'm all for it. I'd hate to think that after my third (or fourth, or fifth) time I'll never ever get to see it again in 3D.

Dybbuks can be so clingy

Today I watched The Unborn, a PG-13 horror movie starring Odette Yustman as a hot chick who finds out that she's actually Jewish (the horror!) and Gary Oldman as a hip rabbi who's really good with demon dogs. I was actually going to see it like ten months ago, but the stupid paper had the theater schedule wrong (I guess papier really is geduldig), so I took it as a sign from Baby Jebus' deadbeat dad and never tried to catch it again. Anyway, today I watched it for the first time, and I guess I would have enjoyed seeing it on the big screen, but I can't really say it's a huge loss that I hadn't. The concept of a Jewish horror movie is a pretty interesting idea, but instead of dealing with the horrors of your typical Jewish family dinner or the weird semi-erotic relationship between the common Jew and their overbearing parents, The Unborn is mostly about the single most famous boogyman of Heeb culture, that creepy ghost/demon type being that possesses the bodies of its unwilling victims known as a Dybbuk. The movie offers a handful of genuinely creepy moments, like a woman whose entire face is a huge mouth full of sharp pointy teeth, a senile old dude with an upside down head and an adorable puppy with a similar affliction, but most of it is pretty much the same old crap we've come to expect from PG-13 ghost movies about good looking college kids. The only real reason so see this movie is the gorgeous Odette Yustman, also known as that really hot chick whose pants that douche from Cloverfield ran through an entire monster infested city just to get into one last time. She was a pretty good distraction from all the usual teen-horror crap I couldn't give a flying poop about. Like, they kept talking about how the Dybbuk is trying to get inside her body, which mostly made me identify with it, because I know that if I were some kind of angry spirit, the first place I would have tried to get into is Ms. Yustman too! I'm pretty sure I wouldn't even have to be angry to want that. Or a spirit. Or, there's this scene where she watches some people wheel a dead baby into an ambulance after it was killed by a mirror or something, which made me think very seriously about whether or not I'd be willing to kill an infant with my bare hands in order to be able to take in a nice deep whiff of her tight little ass, a question I haven't been able to settle so far. There's a good reason why that ass is all over the poster. She also looks pretty sexy with those weird contact lenses that are supposed to make it look like she's got some sort of genetic eye disease. There's nothing too original about The Unborn, but if you think you're the sort of person who could enjoy looking at an extremely attractive young woman whine and moan for about an hour an a half, like I sure am, you just might be able to enjoy it.

Odette Yustman's front side

Odette Yustman's mom in The Unborn is played by the lovely Carla Gugino (of Sin City boob-fame), who is almost 40 years old and still looks totally hot. It's so weird how some women look absolutely fabulous in their forties, while with some 20-something year old chicks, if you look down their tops it gives you that distinct and unsettling feeling of staring at your grandmother's cleavage. Mary's baby daddy sure does work in mysterious ways.

We get it, you have a perineum

Today I finished watching the third season of Californication, and the last episode was sort of a downer, but also really good. The season was mostly about Hank trying to juggle the many many women in his life, and his ultimate failure to do so. In addition to Karen and their teenage daughter there were three different chicks, all three of which he was banging quite happily. There was the dean's wife, who was pretty much your basic posh British broad, very polite and very attractive and very classy. She also kept trying to get into Mr. Moody's pants in an extremely charming and English way in order to get back at her dean husband who kinda looks like that Jewish guy from The O.C. and at one time had supposedly banged some student chick. There was also Hank's teaching assistant, which was a character I didn't get at all. I mean, I'm pretty sure I've seen her playing the mother of a teenager in Roswell like ten years ago, so now I'm supposed to believe she's a desirable woman in her early thirties? Pfft. And what's the deal with the boob-double? Even if her own aren't nice enough, or if she simply didn't want them exposed on camera, we don't really need to see some anonymous woman's bare torso, do we? Not much point in that. Finally, there was Hank's voluptuous student, played by Susan Sarandon's daughter, which I guess would make her Tim Robbins' half sister or something. I liked her better in Saved, where she had short dark hair instead of long blonde stripper-hair. Pretty awesome boobs though. It really annoys me how most strippers on TV get to keep their tops on the entire time, so this was a welcome surprise. Anyway, Hank did a crap job at sleeping with all three of them while the mother of his child was out of town, and it all blew up in his face in a pretty entertaining way. The final episode, however, was all about his little indiscretion from the first episode of the first season, a little over two years ago. He got beat up and arrested and yelled at, and all because of this one little time he accidentally slipped the ol' noodle into a very mature 16 year old girl, played by the little girl from The Nanny, who had since managed to grow herself a pair of absolutely magnificent breasts. He didn't even know she was underage! Like any middle aged man could ever say no to that, had the opportunity presented itself to him. Poor Hank. Not to mention Becca's confession near the end of the episode, which gave me a pretty awful flashforward to when my own future daughter (who will never actually exist) will tell me that she let some greasy disgusting asshole into her innocent little peepee. Poor old Hank. Oh well. Californication has already been renewed for a fourth season, so I guess that in about nine months his hangover should be starting to subside.

Madeline Zima. Bitches be crazy

And speaking of tragedies involving attractive young women. There's this one porn chick that I really really like, though I should probably say used to like, even if I really don't want to. She was a gorgeous little thing, with flowing red hair and the prettiest, tiniest little vagina you'd ever see on a legal caucasian girl. She was Jewish and not at all shy about it, she mostly just did solo and girl on girl stuff, and according to her MySpace page she was a pretty interesting and not too unintelligent person, the kind you'd actually want to have a conversation with before she gives you a sloppy handjob behind a dumpster in some dark alley. Well, I guess she still is most of these things, only according to recent photos of her posted last week, these days she looks more like an x-ray of a methhead with a couple of oranges bolted to her chest under the skin. Why do these young women do that to themselves? Is it so hard to not wear any clothes for a living that you have to turn to hard drugs? I mean, she's only in her early twenties, and she already looks like she's had more spunk pumped through her than me. I really do hope she gets better soon. What a fraking tragedy. Um, yeah. I've finally started watching Battlestar Galactica.

Keep your filthy mitts off my Dexter!

Today I watched the final episode of the fourth season of Dexter, and was instantly shattered into a million tiny little pieces of meat by the last three minutes. I really like Dexter, in a rather intense and emotional way. He may be a little warmer and fuzzier than your average serial killer, but his adorable social inadequacies and quirky homicidal tendencies have completely captured my cold raisin heart. He's just so hopelessly damaged, you just want to stuff him full of cotton wool and make a big leathery teddy bear out of him. Definitely the sort of guy I'd like to have a beer with, maybe later beat a teenager or two into a bloody pulp for being too loud and annoying. The first season of Dexter was really cool, and pretty traditionally structured. There was the whole Ice Truck Killer plot, but mostly it was about the kill of the week, which was just fine by me. The second season, however, is where it really started to get to me. There was the police finding all the neatly chopped-up body parts he's been dumping at sea all this time, and that mean ol' detective dude who's always had it in for poor little Dexter, and that crazy British broad ("pardon my tits") he was banging behind his boring girlfriend's back, and it was all so intense that I could physically feel every bit of stress he was under in my own private bones. The third season was also really good, with that dude from L.A. Law playing a lawyer or something in which Dexter finds a friend of sorts. Among other things it has taught me that even when you're utterly desperate for companionship it is sometimes better to be on your own, and that you should never trust anyone with your deepest darkest secrets, unless, that is, if it's really really funny. The season ended in a wholly heartwarming scene, with Dexter getting married and fathering a child and finally coming to terms with his place in the world, so as I was watching the last episode of the new season today I was expecting pretty much the same thing. Boy, was I wrong. The fourth season was all about the Trinity Killer, portrayed by the awesome and mighty John Lithgow. I'm pretty sure I've only seen him before in 3rd Rock as a goofy alien with a scary old witch for a girlfriend, but now I'm totally convinced that he is fully capable of bludgeoning me to death with a stainless steel hammer. We got the usual cat and mouse bit between Dexter and him, which was just as fun and effective as anything I've come to expect from the show, but absolutely nothing could have prepared me for that one final scene, after which nothing in Dexter's world will ever be the same. It was utterly heartbreaking, but also kind of exciting, because I can't even begin to imagine what the next season is going to look like or what this new Dexter, forged once again by this overwhelming tragedy, is going to be like. I really do hope he finds a way to get over it and move on some day, somehow. *sniff*

Darla will indeed be missed

Dexter is based on a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay, two of which I've read a couple of years ago, Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted Dexter. I guess they were sort of OK, but the TV show is just so much better. The problem is that Book-Dexter comes across as somewhat of an obnoxious dick who thinks he's hilarious even though he obviously isn't. Not nearly as adorable as TV-Dexter. Also, by the end of the first book Dexter's sister finds out about his true nature, and it doesn't really seem to bother her all that much. Are we going to get something like that in season five, now that Debra knows where her brother came from? I guess I'll have to wait about nine months to find out. Ugh.

All bow down before the mighty Washing Machine

Today I watched Franklyn, yet another film I could've seen at the Icon sci-fi and fantasy film festival but hadn't, and I'm not completely sure, but I think I've enjoyed it quite a bit. Franklyn is a British drama about a scrawny little dude who gets jilted at the altar by his bitch of a fiancee and somehow manages to reunite with this chick he used to want to bang back when they were both little kids. It's also about this pretentious art student slash drama queen who sort of looks like Eva Green and is really into making lame video art and even lamer suicide attempts. Franklyn is also about some old guy who's out looking for his long lost son, who I guess got kinda screwy after visiting the sandier parts of the smelly Middle East, something I can totally relate to. The thing is, that's not all. The only reason I even watched this film is because Franklyn is also a sci-fi/fantasy fable about this guy in a creepy scarecrow mask who narrates his own actions with an American accent and keeps fighting these dudes who wear freakishly high top-hats in a dark gothic city known only as Meanwhile City that's set in an alternate universe where strange people in strange costumes wear strange masks and practice an endless variety of strange religions, as everyone has to choose a religion and anyone can start their own. It all comes together quite nicely in the end, but I couldn't help but feel sort of cheated as I was watching it, because while the trailer showed mostly scenes from the one cool storyline, there's actually very little of it in the final film. I would've really liked to see an entire movie set in this strange and beautifully dark world, and it seems like such a shame that so much time and effort went into creating it when I'm pretty sure it didn't get much more than 20 minutes of screen time. Oh well. It's still a pretty good movie that looks really cool and still manages to be quite original, which is no small a feat in this era of big screen adaptations, sequels, remakes, reboots and reimaginings. People are so lazy these days. No wonder everybody's so thrilled about finally being done with this whole stupid decade in just a little over a week.

Eva Green, dressed like a high-class hooker

I didn't used to like Eva Green all that much, but I kinda do now. Her performance here is pretty impressive, and I totally dig her near-flawless British accent, which is much better than the one Ryan Phillippe assumes in the film. It almost made me forget all about how weird her boobs looked in The Dreamers, a film that had I bothered to watch would have taught me the shocking truth that people used to have sex in the '60s. I mean, they're not bad looking boobs in any way, they're just very... um... European. You see, it's her nipples. They're just too damn big. Which isn't to say that that's what a European woman's boobs are most likely to look like, but that European films are where you're most likely to encounter those kinds of natural, slight imperfections. Pretty good color though, areola-wise. And a very nice looking vagina too, if a little on the fuzzy side. I guess it was a pretty normal thing for men in the '60s to cough up a hairball or two every once in a while.

Woman, feed me!

Hanukkah is finally over, so today I went to see Where the Wild Things Are, and I really really liked it! As a child I've never read Maurice Sendak's book, which I think is pretty sad. I was definitely aware of the book and the whole Where the Wild Things Are phenomenon over the years, but the first time I've actually read it was about a year ago, when I was supposed to meet someone at the Tel-Aviv art museum and had some time to browse around the museum shop. They had this stand with a bunch of children's books, so I picked up a copy of Where the Wild Things Are and flipped through it to pass the time. It may not have taken too much time to read it all, as it's only got like ten sentences, but the cute story and imaginative artwork had definitely made me feel all warm and giddy on the inside. The film version takes the book as its basic premise and builds on top of it a story that is both sad and exciting. It cost about $100M to make, but it looks and sounds and feels like a quaint little indie film. Well, a children's indie film. With big shaggy monsters. Which you have to admit is pretty damn awesome. The Wild Things all look absolutely fantastic, and they're all played by big guys in gigantic suits with part animatronic and part CGI faces. They jump around, they have dirt fights, they sleep in one big furry pile, they destroy things with boundless joy, but most of all they seem to really like spending their time talking about how unhappy they are, which is exactly what Max, the little boy in the silly costume, is expected to fix. like, there's a Wild Thing that's upset about how another Wild Thing keeps wandering off to meet her other, non-Wild friends. And there's a Wild Thing that's upset because everybody keeps ignoring him and pushing him around. And there's a couple of Wild Things where the guy is a big gentle marshmallow of a Thing, while his girlfriend is a whiny, depressing bitch that sounds exactly like the ever-obnoxious Catherine O'Hara (more about the voice work after the photo of the ridiculously hot redhead). I'm not quite sure how all that constant bickering is going to appeal to the common child viewer, but I really enjoyed it. It's exactly the kind of awkward tension I'm used to in real life. The music in the movie, composed by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, is also really good. Not the kind of stuff I'd listen to on my personal MP3 player, but as a soundtrack it fits the material perfectly. The main difference between the book and the film is that while the in the book the Wild Things live in what looks like a jungle-type place, the film looks like it's set in the brown and depressing Australian outback. Oh well. I suppose nobody's perfect. It's still an extremely well made film, and I only wish I could have seen it as a child. I'd like to think I would have liked it just as much back then, though I'm probably wrong. Kids are generally stupid little brats, and I'm pretty sure I was no exception. Odds are you weren't either.

Lauren Ambrose is a total toe sucker

As I was sitting there in the theater, once again all by myself with no one else around, I couldn't help thinking that one of the Wild Things' voice sounded awfully familiar. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I was convinced that later today I was about to post here a photo of a really pretty chick. And what do you know! As soon as the credits came up, Lauren Ambrose's name flickered on the screen right in front of me. I've once read this line in a Philip K. Dick book (I couldn't tell you which one to save my life) that said that redheaded chicks tend to be either dreadfully ugly or unnaturally beautiful. That seems about right to me. Not to mention the whole fire crotch issue, which is like the hottest thing ever. Ms. Ambrose may have been Claire for five seasons of Six Feet Under, but to me she'll always be that mentally retarded teenager from Law & Order who got an empty beer bottle stuck up her little VJ and didn't seem to mind it one bit ("I've got a flat tummy", she said). Cute!

Does Robo-Lincoln dream of freeing electric slaves?

This week I finished reading Philip K. Dick's We Can Build You after a few months of reader's block, during which I battled with a 600 page book that turned out to be pretty boring, despite having a pretty interesting premise. I have to start by saying that I own 25 books by Philip K. Dick, and that I absolutely love each and every one of them. There really is nothing quite like curling up in bed with a good old Dick between your hands. We Can Build You is about a small electronics firm that takes on the job of producing realistic androids (aka simulacra) based on Civil War figures, starting with Edwin M. Stanton and Abraham Lincoln, complete memory and psychological makeup included. The thing is, that's just on the outside. This fine novel actually deals with the most terrifying creature known to modern man, which is far worse than any mechanical creation that may be brought to life out of mere metal and silicon. What We Can Build You is really about is one man's descent into complete and utter madness as a result of falling in love with an 18 year old schizoid chick. That's right. Yet another PKD book that's basically an extremely well written cautionary tale about the dangers of getting involved with a total crazy bitch. Even the parts that are all about questioning the nature of reality, of the sort that's present in virtually all of Philip K. Dick's work, remain in the purely psychological realm. So instead of getting any 'real' reality shifts, it's more about the development of good old fashioned schizophrenia in the poor guy, a man whose only fault is having fully functional male genitalia. If there's one thing that PKD has taught me over the years it's that women are the enemy. The women in his stories are confident, powerful, cold blooded and highly sexual, and Pris Frauenzimmer here is no different. She's cold, calculating, mean, dangerous, and like most of Dick's female love interests, endowed with a lovely set of small, high breasts. I've read somewhere once that Philip K. Dick could never describe a woman's appearance without mentioning her boobs, and while not completely accurate, there's definitely some truth to it. I guess that the moral of the story is: never fall for chicks you're attracted to, because it's nothing but a clear recipe for disaster. Words to live by indeed.

One of the characters in We Can Build You is a mutant whose eyes are located under his nose and his mouth right above it. Here's what Philip K. Dick might have looked like if his own face were upside down:

Upside down PKD and a furry friend

The next Dick I'll be reading is going to be Galactic Pot Healer. And after that I'm going to have to get some more. I always need more. Even when all the various plots and characters start to mix together in my head. Especially when that happens. One can never have too much Dick.

Gawd, I wish I had a tail

Today I went to see Avatar, and it was so friggin awesome that I totally got a big fat geek-boner the whole 162 minutes! At first I really wanted to hate it, or at least to be indifferent to it. I really wanted to be able to say, really? is that it? that's all they could come up with after 15 years and half a billion dollars? In addition to the big crazy hype I was also pretty concerned about the whole 'mean old humans invading a planet inhabited by a peaceful alien race' angle, which could be played as a heavy-handed post-9/11 analogy. Well, I guess that in a way it sort of is played out that way, with the armed human force being so utterly vicious and the natives so pretty and graceful and pure hearted, not to mention all that big steaming pile of priceless something that's buried under their sacred place, but the thing is, there's so much more to this movie, so much beauty and imagination and emotion that you can't help but be overwhelmed by the sheer greatness of it. Sitting there at the theater, I really did feel that I was witnessing something special. Something that's a complete breakthrough, not just in technology, but in the art of cinematic storytelling. Something that will live on for decades and decades. I've read someone say that he's jealous of the generation that this will be its Star Wars, and I totally agree, but then it got me thinking. What's the Star Wars of my generation? The obvious answer would be The Matrix, but when it came out I was already 19 years old, and to be honest, as cool as The Matrix was, it wasn't really life changing material. Avatar, on the other hand, will definitely shape the young minds of the hordes of prepubescent and teenage dorks who attended today's screening at the Gat theater. Ah, to be young and socially awkward. When I was 13 and wanted to see a 3D movie I had to go all the way to friggin Eurodisney and experience the next best thing to being molested by the King of Pop. Kids these days are so lucky you just wanna reach down their stupid little throats and turn them inside out. Anyway. Everything about the world of Avatar is simply gorgeous. The plant life, the animals and the big blue natives are all so beautiful to look at and painfully real that you completely accept them the entire time, as wondrous and otherworldly as they may seem. It isn't just about technology, the kind that can and does bring all sorts of breathtaking and brightly colored creatures to life in a way I've never seen before. What is truly astonishing is the intensity and emotional depth of the humanoid characters' performances. It's still performance capture, but it makes that Robert Zemeckis crap look like those puppet shows little boys make with their privates: somewhat entertaining, but extremely awkward and wholly unimpressive. It's so convincing that it almost made me cry, more than once, and that usually only happens when there's something seriously wrong with my butt. And the alien love-making scene was pretty awesome too. I totally forgive James Cameron for making that stupid boat movie. Not that I've ever actually seen it. All I know about it is that there's a big boat in it that sinks, and that before it does Leonardo DiCaprio draws Philip Seymour Hoffman naked. I'm not quite sure which one of them had no clothes on. Possibly the both of them. The '90s were weird that way. Anyway. Right after I see Where the Wild Things Are next week (I didn't go this week because it's Hanukkah and Israeli parents are just stupid enough to take their annoying little brats to see it) I'm totally going to see Avatar again. My world has officially been rocked, and by a dude, no less. Sigh. I always knew it was going to happen this way.

Blue sideboob is totally hot

I've read an interview with Mr. Cameron this morning in which he discussed the issue of Avatar's aspect ratio. He said that the 2D prints will be in scope (2.35:1), but the 3D screenings will be in regular 1.78:1, except for theaters that can't handle it, and those will show it in scope. Now, the thing about the Gat theater is that something went wrong when they had a new screen installed about seven years ago, because their screen isn't wide enough to show films in full scope, so they screen them in letterbox format, with black bars on the top and bottom. Well, guess how they screened Avatar today. That's right. As if the screen there isn't small enough as it is. I really do pity anyone who sat farther than the third row. Oh well. I guess that's what gawd had built the Yes Planet megaplex for.

A day at the farm

A sheep


Lupo the sheep really seemed to take a shine to me


Pasim the snake


Guy the alpaca


Dindin the deer


Dindin up close


The baby room of a future serial killer


...and the proud parents' living room


Snoopy the Cocker Spaniel


A donkey that really likes eggplants


Jimmy the adorable buffalo


A bus

Du Hochgebaute Stadt

I spent the weekend in Jerusalem, accompanied by three 50 year old women. One of them was my mom. Another was a real live Christian from the Ukraine who couldn't speak a word of Hebrew or English, only Russian or something, so I couldn't really communicate with her. Yeah, I know, I lead such a glamorous life. Anyway. Here's the thing about your typical Jerusalem chicks (not to be confused with the average Jerusalem chick): They're very pretty. Really pretty. I mean, I saw this one chick at this artists market, she had a stand with stuff she knitted herself, like dolls and stuff, and she was so incredibly lovely and the way she sat there and knitted a sock or something was so adorable that I couldn't help but walk by her stand again and again, back and forth, staring at her and just generally doing the total weirdo creep thing. There was this one doll there with red horns and a red tube top that I kinda liked and kinda felt like buying from her, just to see if I could get away with brushing my fingers against hers as we make the transaction, but thankfully I've decided that the mere concept of a chick like that acknowledging my existence would probably cause me to pass out and hit my head on the sidewalk and quite possibly burst into bright blue flames, so I took one last look and walked away forever. Too bad my memory is so crappy when it comes to faces. I'll probably completely forget what she looked like in a couple of days. I can't even remember if she wore glasses or not. She definitely had the sort of face that looked like it was made for glasses, which I totally dig. You know what I mean. Anyway. Typical Jerusalem chicks: They're very pretty, really pretty, and they're very intelligent, really intelligent, and they're very nice, really nice. The only problem is that living in our nation's capital tends to turn you into an extremely dull person. Like, a typical Jerusalem chick is the sort of person that's a real joy to look at, that you may like to bang once or twice, maybe let her help you with your homework or something, definitely let her star in your favorite masturbatory fantasies, but to actually be in a relationship with her, to actually have to listen to her talk on and on about whatever it is people in Jerusalem talk about, that would be complete and utter hell. Having to listen to a chick talk on and on about whatever it is people in Jerusalem are interested in for more than a couple of days is the sort of thing that would probably make you crazy enough to go on a bloody rampage and bite her friggin' head off and spit it out and put it on top of a big stick outside your house to warn off any other boring people who may be getting too close to your doorstep. OK, like, for instance, consider Natalie Portman:

Natalie Portman in a typical annoyingly hot pose

Ms. Portman was born in Jerusalem, and she makes an excellent example. Now, imagine what it may feel like to be flirting with her, having light, friendly conversation about nothing in particular, smiling and gesturing. Pretty neat, right? She probably looks pretty good bottomless too. Next, imagine what it would probably be like to have a lengthy discussion with her about, say, politics. Or the economy. Or global warming. Imagine you'd have to do that every day for at least a week. Finally, imagine what her head would look like on a stick. Delicious, isn't it?

And look at what I got in the old city, even though

it was probably made in China or something!


And it's got a funny looking thingy for a handle!


And it's even ribbed, for the pleasure of the next asshole that pisses me off!

I'm just a bit worried I'm gonna get raped

Yesterday I watched Lesbian Vampire Killers, a British vampire comedy starring two dorky guys and a buttload of incredibly hot British and European chicks. I liked it quite a bit, but it's not like I had much of a choice. How could anyone not enjoy a movie with that many scantly clad young women who keep making out with each other? It's impossible! The movie is all about two losers who are down on their luck (one has a total crazy bitch for an on-and-off girlfriend, the other is fat and unemployed) who decide to go hiking somewhere out in rural England when they realize that they can't afford to go anywhere nicer. In the small town of British Sounding Name I Can't Remember they meet a group of vaguely European chicks (led by the lovely MyAnna Buring) and follow them into a big scary house, where they are consequently attacked by a group of angry lesbian vampires (led by the stupid hot Vera Filatova). There's also something about an ancient curse and some kind of priest who doesn't watch vampire movies, but I guess I didn't pay enough attention. Is it a funny movie? Sure, yeah, I guess, in a bland, obvious sort of way. You know how despite what everybody else said, Shaun of the Dead was just sort of humorous at best, and how you didn't give a flying fudge about any of the characters but it had enough drinking and zombies and entertaining gore to keep you satisfied? Well, it's sort of like that, only with like a million times more TNA. You don't really see that many naked boobs, it's just one pair and it's far away in the background, which is pretty annoying for a movie with the word 'lesbian' in the title, but almost all of the chicks are really hot and most of them have sharp, pointy teeth that look like the most exquisite way imaginable of getting oneself neutered. And when you drive stake-like objects through their hearts (or chop their heads off, or split their skulls in two) they explode into this thick, white slime that gets everywhere and does not in any way look unlike the natural reaction any healthy male would have in the presence of friendly lesbo chicks, vampire or otherwise. I still would have preferred the traditional blood splatters, since it is after all what vamps feed on, but I guess this way works too. Would I ever watch it again? Sure, I guess, but I'll probably have to get pretty drunk to fully enjoy it. It would also probably help if I knocked one out beforehand. Yesterday I was kinda stressed out over having to go to the doctor so she could tell me I have brain cancer in my butt or something, so any kind of foul play was completely out of the question, but normally it's exactly the sort of film that forces you to take short pantsless breaks as you watch it. Lovely.

Vampire Vera is welcome to any bodily fluids of mine she may be interested in

Ah, Vera Filatova. A woman whose facial features alone can make my dangly bits feel things most women's spread open poop chutes could never even come close to. Oddly enough, her character in Peep Show likes girls too. Could it mean that she really does prefer the bitchier sex in real life? One can only hope!

You shore got a purdy mouth

Yesterday I went to see Zombieland, directed by Ruben Fleischer and starring Woody Harrelson, a Jewish dork with an ear fetish and a whole lot of scary zombies. It's got to be one of the coolest, funniest and just plain awesomest movies I've seen in a long while! It's not so-bad-it's-good, because it isn't bad at all. It's not stupid-but-fun, because it's actually really clever. And it's not really-cool-in-3D-but-I-wouldn't-touch-it-otherwise, because it's simply not in 3D (but the sequel will be). What it is is a hilarious, very gory and at times brilliant zombie comedy that's even better than Shaun of the Dead, its main inspiration. The main character is this dorky and phobic loner who manages to survive in this zombie infested world simply because of these quaint personality traits. On his way back home, back to the family he had never really felt a part of, he meets a loud Twinkie-loving redneck and a pair of cute hustler sisters, and the bloody road trip begins. I really liked seeing the crazy hot Amber Heard as the first chick who the dork gets close to, and also the first one to try to eat him. Personally I would have absolutely loved it if Ms. Heard ever tried to eat me, especially in full zombie makeup, broken foot included. At one point the bunch ends up in the luxurious Hollywood mansion of a glamorous movie star who shall remain nameless (hint: he has the same initials as the common poo and it's not Bob Marley) which leads to a series of cool scenes that don't have much to do with zombies, but are still all very funny. The final scenes in the big abandoned amusement park are pretty awesome, proving just how creepy amusement parks really are, especially at night. It's a scientific fact that anything that's fun and wholesome during the day turns evil and twisted at night. Kinda like your friendly neighborhood pedo. And speaking of pedos! Abigail Breslin is absolutely adorable as the younger sister, even though they didn't let her use a real fake gun in the movie. It's pretty obvious by how whenever she shoots there's no recoil. Too bad. Little girls with big guns are so cute! Emma Stone is pretty hot as the big sister and love interest, appearing pretty mature for someone who was only 9 years old in '97. Woody Harrelson does a very good job as the cowboy type who doesn't take kindly to the consistency of coconut, and Jesse Eisenberg is pretty convincing as the OCD dork with the list of rules on how not to get bit by the undead. Zombieland is easily the best feel-good movie of the year. That is, if you're the sort of person who feels really good about reanimated corpses. I know I am.

Boobies can be pretty scary. Don't I know it

In other news: today I got my first three movies on HD DVD! Two of them have a regular DVD version on the flip side, but there's a good chance I will never be able to play the third one at home ever! There's nothing quite as adorable as an obsolete home video format. As a kid I used to be fascinated with laser discs. They're just so... big! A few weeks ago they showed someone playing (and flipping) a laser disc on Californication, and it was almost as creepy as watching Kathleen Turner talk about her soaking wet genitalia.

Does anyone remember D-VHS?

Two broads and a poopload of guns?

Yesterday I went to see Kirot, an Israeli movie directed by Danny Lerner and starring Ukranian Bond girl Olga Kurylenko and rockstar wannabe Ninet Tayeb. Kirot was originally pitched as a film about "two chicks and a whole lot of guns", and that's what I expected it to be. Unfortunately, I was sort of disappointed. In the brief history of Israeli cinema there's a severe shortage of genre films, and especially of good genre films, so I was pretty excited about the idea of Danny Lerner, whose directorial debut Frozen Days is one of the coolest Israeli movies ever, making a full blown action movie set in the heart of Tel-Aviv. What I actually got was more of a cheesy melodrama about prostitution, human trafficking and domestic abuse with a handful of true coolness thrown here and there between the sappy parts and long film school-type silences. Olga Kurylenko plays Galia, a Ukranian chick who left her daughter to become a sex worker in a sleazy whore house in Tel-Aviv. After two years she feels like she's had enough of the local clientele and tries to run away, which leads to her being locked up in a scary dungeon and beat up pretty badly. Her pimp finally makes a deal with her: if she does a couple of hit jobs for him, he'll give her all the money he owes her and return her passport, so she can fly back to the Ukraine. He then puts her up in a gross little apartment, where she's supposed to sit and wait for his instructions. The thing is, the neighbors are being way too loud for her to get a proper beauty sleep. See, the husband guy enjoys beating his wife up whenever's possible, which is pretty much all the time. Not cool at all, but sort of understandable when your wife looks exactly like Ninet Tayeb, Israel's most annoying pop sensation. The two women, who communicate using the international language known as Bad English, form a strong bond between them, which includes Galia instructing her new friend on how to use a gun, and toy with the idea of running away together. We're supposed to believe that a prostitute who has only killed a couple of people at close range can shoot like a professional hitwoman, but there's a limit to my capacity for suspension of disbelief. The few action scenes are pretty good, but mostly they just made me wish there were more of them. Thanks to the rather low budget most of the actual bloody violence is performed off camera, which sort of stinks. Like, you see someone shooting a gun, then cut to a guy with red stained rips in his shirt. Not very dynamic. I did really like the scenes that take place at the Tel-Aviv central bus station, which include the near-complete destruction of an Egged bus. Ms. Kurylenko is probably the classiest broad to ever appear in an Israeli movie. It is a pure joy to behold her gracing the ugly streets of downtown Tel-Aviv with her gracious presence. You even get to see her speak a few phrases in Hebrew, like "I'm no sucker" and "fuck you". That was pretty damn hot. And best off all, she gets naked! We get a full profile of her in the nude, which seems to be the director's preferred way of showing female nudity on screen, on her way to dip in a mikveh. Everything that Max Payne was severely short on due to its PG-13 rating is shown here, and it is a glorious sight to behold. Ninet Tayeb is just tragically awful in her first film role, as you'd expect from someone who is the exact opposite of cool. One can only hope that in the future she'll stick to what she does best, which is changing hair styles and letting the paparazzi take photos of her going to the bathroom or something. I'd like to say that a different actress would have made the character more believable, but the truth is that Kirot suffers from a script that is way too cheesy and just not smart enough. That said, I'm still waiting for Danny Lerner's next project. With a good script and a bigger budget I think he could do wonders for the local film industry, tiny and pathetic as it may be.

Olga Kurylenko climbing over a kir. Nice gam, isn't it?

What bothered me the most about Kirot was that one scene was shot in a restaurant called Avazi, where they serve dead force-fed geese for people to feed on. It is, however, where the bad guys meet, so I guess it's sort of OK. It would hardly surprise me to find out that people who are cruel to animals are also involved in human trafficking. Sticking stuff into someone without their full consent is not cool, be they man or beast.

A dumb skank and her greasy himbo of a boyfriend

V is for Very stupid hair

Over the last couple of weeks I've been watching V: The Original Miniseries and V: The Final Battle, created by Kenneth Johnson. I really like the new V show, so I had to find out where and how it all began, and I'm very happy that I did. Both miniseries are just loads and loads of cheesy '80s sci-fi fun! The aliens look just like us and they say they're all for peace and love and they use their Nazi-like propaganda machine to make us all think so, but what they really want is to steal all our stuff and then eat us, and if you peal off their fake skin you can see that they're actually scary lizard people from outer space that shoot venom out their mouths and feed on cute little guinea pigs! The first thing they do after we welcome them down to Earth (to the sound of the Star Wars theme music, no less) is to round up all the human scientists under suspicion of terrorism, and there's a pretty cool bit where a Jewish Holocaust survivor helps a family of scientists by hiding them in a spare room in his house. The leader of the human resistance is some kind of hot blonde chick, which I guess tells you all you need to know about what our species is like under duress. I really liked the storyline about the teenage girl who allows herself to get knocked up by a studly alien she has a crush on, which raises some pretty heavy issues like teen pregnancy, intercultural relationships, abortions, teen suicide and above all, crazy half man half reptile mutant babies! The acting in both miniseries is just awful throughout, as one would expect from '80s television, but the special effects are actually really good. Aside from a couple of terrible matte shots the optical effects for the spaceships and shuttelcrafts aren't too distracting, and most of the aliens make up is pretty convincing. That is, as long as you only see a green patch under ripped fake skin or a reptile eye. Whenever you see what a full alien face looks like, which thankfully doesn't happen very often, it looks about as good as a bad Halloween mask. What's really weird is how all the aliens have silly '80s hair! That alone should have tipped everyone off from the beginning. And this should be a lesson to us all. If an alien race ever comes down here in fancy spaceships and they look just like us and wear their hair just like we do, it means that they're trying to look like us on purpose and that they're hiding something. Like lizard tongues. Or third boobs. Or both! Now that's pretty damn sexy.

Congratulations, it's a bouncing baby turtle

Yesterday I also watched The Informers, based on the book by Bret Easton Ellis and featuring Amber Heard's glorious boobs and a bunch of other stuff I didn't pay too much attention to. I've read the book a few years ago but I couldn't really remember much about it, and the only reason I watched it is because I found out that Ms. Heard doesn't wear much in it. Christ, what a gorgeous piece of ass. Chicks that hot who are willing to pretend to fuck on camera should get a Humanitarian of the Year award. I know that Ms. Heard's brief scenes in The Informers have definitely made my life a hell of a lot more livable.

Every time Amber Heard takes her clothes off, an angel gets its wings

I almost forgot to remember to be scared

Yesterday I watched 9, directed by Shane Acker and co-produced by Russian insane asylum escapee Timur Bekmambetov and lame has-been with stupid hair Tim Burton. An awesome American computer animated feature film, who would have thought! 9 came out in Israel last week, but since everybody's an asshole here, the only screens that show it in Tel-Aviv are about the same size as your average 3 shekel stamp. I've never really enjoyed the sensation of getting ripped off, so there was just no way I'd go see it under those conditions, which left me no other option but to download 9 in 720p and watch it at home, no matter how much I wanted the creators of the movie to have my money in exchange for a proper viewing of their work. After having seen the movie, I'm a tragillion times more pissed at those retarded little dumbfucks who are in charge of its local distribution. What a truly great film. 9 has to be one of the coolest, creepiest and most imaginative animated movies ever created. Everything about it, the script, the animation, the set design, the character design, the music, everything is absolutely top notch. All the main nine characters, all named 1 through 9 in order of their creation, are basically these creepy little cloth dolls with mechanical guts, each with its own handmade looking style. Each of them also has its unique way of keeping their clockwork innards in place, from laces through different kinds of buttons and finally with 9's zipper, which I though was a really nice touch. They all live in a very realistic and utterly depressing post apocalyptic world, where war has destroyed all biological life, leaving only these nine little guys (eight guys and one girl, actually) to run around scared of various animal-like metal-and-bone atrocities and get high on magnets (which actually makes perfect sense if you're a mechanical being). It's all very cool and very intelligent and very dark, thanks to the PG-13 rating, which is pretty good for an animated feature. Tim Burton would kill to be able to make something this incredible these days. His Corpse Bride was a pathetic and soulless affair, nothing more than a desperate attempt to recapture his past glory. 9 is pure genius, far far above the usual kiddie crap Pixar and its kind have been peddling for over a decade now. There's so much animated crap out there these days that I think it's extremely important to celebrate a rare cinematic miracle like this one. Like, I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but today I almost went to see Disney's A Christmas Carol, just because it's in 3D. That is, until I remembered just how much I hated the trailers and how much I loathe Robert Zemeckis' own brand of motion capture animation, which is the most technologically advanced technique to make movies that look like bad puppet shows. I've recently read an article in a local website about how kid movies these days are too scary, and they mentioned Coraline, 9, A Christmas Carol and Where the Wild Things Are as examples. I'm always amazed at how some people who think animation is just for children still have enough brain power left to type up semi-coherent sentences and post them online.

Kitteh!

I also watched Push this week, and it's a pretty sleek and colorful film, but I don't really have much to say about it other than this: Push was released early this year and was shot when Dakota Fanning was 14, and she looks pretty much like her usual adorable self in it. Well, a couple of weeks ago I saw her on Leno (which was a rather painful experience, since I hate Jay Leno pretty deeply) and guess what? She's not cute anymore! I really do hope that it's just an awkward phase and that she's going to grow out of it and turn into a hot chick in the near future, otherwise it's going to be a complete waste. That's one of the few joys of growing old. If you're patient enough, every cute little child actress is going to become bangable at some point.