Even I didn't notice...

Impromptu week off! Posts shall resume this weekend, barring more computer malfunctions. Since you probably ended up here by accident, please do so again Saturday.

It's not TV, it's HBO

"It's TV. What do they think people are watching?"
-Larry David

I still love HBO. Flight of the Conchords, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Wire, Big Love, and Real Time with Bill Maher are still holding the threads of the network. Even the heterosexual depression party that is Tell Me You Love Me seems such an admirable cable venture. But those interviews with "real couples" (i.e. couples you avoid dinners with for a reason) that air afterwards? Reason enough to finally remember you got Cinemax in the package deal too.

I'm convinced that putting Valerie Cherish in a premature deathbed was the first dooming mistake for the golden network. Their reputation may have suffered since The Sopranos went to black, but things are definitely looking up again...

Alexander Payne, the savvy mind behind the likes of Election and Sideways, is taking directorial reins on the new series, Hung. It promises to be a dark comedy about a very gifted father and sports coach who finally gets to use his best assets. (here) Payne's sensitivity and satire, HBO's consistent quality, and weekly full frontal?! HBO has me for life.

Not to mention this Fall also sees the return of Alan Ball to HBO, after the consummate brilliance of Six Feet Under. And this time he's brought vampires! True Blood promises that, Southerners, and a girl named Sookie Stackhouse. Alan Ball's first venture was stellar from start to finish, and if his characters and mythology remain anywhere near as textured, dark and funny, this could be the next best thing to happen since Buffy. I like to set my standards almost impossibly high for when I inevitably write more articles about HBO as a dwindling network on the turnaround.

9 Completely Random HBO Moments I Love:

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Larry's chef with Touretts lets out an inspirational tirade of swears on the restaurant's opening night, to everyones eventual delight. Except for Susie Greene that is. Honestly, I'd eat at Larry's restaurant every single night.

"Fuck you, you car wash cunt!"

Sex and the City: Carrie dates Justin Theroux AND Justin Theroux, playing two completely different characters in two completely different episodes. It's almost like they exist in that movie Multiplicity. Vaughn Wysel and Jared are both writers, they both love Ms. Bradshaw, and can only be distinguished by one's almost unibrow and the other's tendency to prematurely ejaculate.


Six Feet Under: The amazing Catherine O'Hara guest stars as a neurotic producer named Carol. She loves to swim naked ("It made me feel like Artemis...") and has her very own cake towel. God forbid you ever park in her driveway, when there's plenty of street parking.

"You would not believe the day I've had. Who is my most bitter enemy? The one person I hate most in the world? Melissa Gilbert. And who opens the door at Mark and Pam's house? That's right... Melissa Gilbert. It was like staring at evil itself... Bring my toast up to my bath and I'll tell you how I made Melissa cry."

Tales from the Crypt: I can recall specifically staying up late just so I could watch a psycho Santa stalk a murderous mom in the series pilot, titled "And All Through the House..." I remember as a kid thinking that HBO was a luxury only afforded to dingy motels looking to lure weary travelers. It worked in my case. Forget the pool, I wanted television that was clearly inappropriate for my age.


Extras: Kate Winslet as a foul-mouthed, Oscar-hungry nun... with sex tips!


OZ: Such an underrated show. Smart, addictive, confrontational television like none other. But more important than all that? Chris Meloni as Chris Keller. Chris Keller walking, bending, bathing and shanking. The Special Victims Unit or The Oswald State Maximum Security Penitentiary? The choice is obvious.


The Sopranos: Carmella falls for Furio. Kidding of course... But what about those sad days when the hilarious Nancy Merchand passed and little Tony was left motherless? Well Livia was brought awkwardly back for a single episode after Merchand's death via the magic of computer generated imagery... not unlike a less depressing Forrest Gump. I had watched this only scene prior to becoming a fan of the show, and I was secretly hoping this holographic person was a series regular. It is about as tasteful as tastelessness goes.


Autopsy with Dr. Baden: Anyone else remember that story about the wife who gave her husband the birthday gift of... raping her sister? What a request! That's when you start putting money in a card.


The Comeback: Valerie records her theme song.

Warm Fruitcake

"I always have a place at the Dairy Queen."

The great Parker Posey is set to star in the latest from the great John Waters, Fruitcake. She'll play alongside A Dirty Shame sex prophet Johnny Knoxville.

I'm blissful enough knowing that Waters is still in this world making movies, but the addition of Posey's a very welcome surprise.

"The plot is officially under wraps but is said to center on the title character, a boy named after his favorite dessert. He runs away from home during the holidays after he and his parents are caught shoplifting meat, then meets up with a runaway girl raised by two gay men and searching for her birth mother." Hollywood Reporter

I love the image of a Baltimore Parker Posey stealing groceries, and possibly between her thighs since this is John Waters. Let's all wish him more Serial Mom luck, and less the Cecil B. Demented kind.

I'm wondering what Fruitcake himself will look like? All I can picture is Gummo with Parker Posey and Johnny Knoxville as his parents, but I think he would have turned out better.


Now, especially for theatre majors and struggling actors, a monologue:

"Billy, it's Susan. I was going through our trunk of souvenirs and I found this doll... The doll we used to play with before the war. Before you went insane...

You were sitting on that quilt that had at one time kept us warm -- It was so warm, Billy, and it smelled like moth balls. Which brought back the times that we spent in the attic, LOCKED UP... with Muffin.

(Looks to doll.)

And you told us that Mother was wrong and we were right, didn't you, Muffin? And I took care of you and Billy. But Billy was much more trouble than you, wasn't he, Muffin? Especially when he got to be bigger than Susan and made her do things she did NOT want to do. Things that made her sick. And Mother pretended she didn't know, but she did...

Well who's lying in a bed in an insane asylum, plugged into a life support system, and who's wearing fine jewels and expensive clothes? And whose husband accidentally died and just recently left me all his money?

(Pulls the plug on Billy.)

And who's on top and who's on bottom now, huh?! Who's on top and who's on bottom now! I'll see you in hell, Billy, but at least I'M going to have some more fun before I get there."

-- Parker Posey's deleted audition from Waiting for Guffman.

Life Lessons: Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)

Dawn Wiener: Dignity. Dignity is an important quality everyone should have. That way you will never grade grub. Grade grubbing is bad because it means you're asking for a grade you shouldn't get. Because if you got it, it wouldn't be fair to everyone who didn't grade grub. It doesn't matter whether you're a boy or girl, man or a child, rich or poor, fat or thin... You should never be a grade grubber. Therefore dignity is a quality everyone should have. Thank you.

A Cruel, Cruel Summer: Cosmos in Chaos (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre)

Pam: "The condition of retrogradation is contrary or inharmonious to the regular direction of actual movement in the zodiac and is, in that respect, evil. Hence, when malefic planets are in retrograde" -- and Saturn is malefic -- "their malefice is increased." Jerry, it just means that Saturn's a bad influence. It's just particularly a bad influence now because it's in retrograde.

Oh no... Capricorn's ruled by Saturn! "There are moments when we cannot believe that what is happening is really true. Pinch yourself and you may find out that it is."

You Burn When You Dance!

5 Reasons
NOMI MALONE
is... More Evolved Than Me...

(Apologies. The beauty of Elizabeth Berkley's performance is not able to be captured in still form. Her highly trained spastic intensity just will not translate.)

1) Nomi can take care of herself, and for that she carries a blade. She also knows when to hold strong, such as when faced with listening to Garth Brooks on a road trip.




2) Nomi doesn't worry, she knows how to vent her anger. Why let things bother you? Things like traffic. She expels her frustration by using that open hatred of cars.



3) Nomi can eat a whole bag of potato chips in one sitting, easy. To this girl, a meal's a meal. She's no snob, she's done doggie chow in a slump. (Even in her artful "self-moment" montage she's gorging!)



4) Nomi treats everything in life like a dance. Even littering.

5) Nomi's knows when an apology is due, like when you set up your only friend with a rapist.

And other life lessons...

Even the rich and handsome are awkward when it comes to foreplay.

A winning attitude pays off.



Dancing IS fucking.

Obscure Beauty: Crash (1996)

"Maybe the next one, darling...
Maybe the next one."

When there's no more room in hell, the dead will blog...

When I finally sat down to watch George A. Romero's recent zombie opus, Diary of the Dead, I had the momentary sensation I'd turned on an episode of quarterlife instead. Only this week's episode seemed suspiciously less dour.


Yes, the man who all but gave birth to the undead (creepy image, right?) has now brought his creations into the modern age. Once they've evolved to using weaponry, can myspace be far behind? These are the very current and legitimate questions Romero tends to comment on with his commentative social commentary. That's a lot of commenting you might say, but you obviously haven't been hanging around film students on an RV, videotaping the world's collapse by the walking dead, now have you?

Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead... all startlingly intelligent, gruesome films that serve as great reflections of their times, while still remaining relevant today. These film students speak overt politics about the war on terror, about skewed media perceptions, and the desire to have a voice of truth in the present flood of voices. That's all well and good, can't we all relate... But imagine what it would have been like if our favorite foursome had gone into Monroeville Mall back in 1978 and said, "the dead are gathering here as a representation of our absurd consumer culture. Why it's almost like we're not that different from the dead ourselves... I guess we should head home then?"

Romero's commentary has never been on the subtle side and it was always shaded between action sequences, tension and comedy, enough to make the package almost remarkably thoughtful and entertaining. Diary attempts this, but every action must be labeled. Blunt head trauma becomes blunt head trauma. The varying viewpoints and verbose characters don't make one think about truth or the current social climate, because one needn't think when there's a literate professor, a world-weary narrator, and five people shouting off camera.


How's the gore? Well it's decent, explicit, and works on the admirable low budget, but it's not the gut-munching slaughterhouse one might expect of a film meant to reflect the savage modern times. It's all a bit lifeless, ironically, and this is a movie with a pool of zombies! It's just not right. Romero's a gifted man, but he's already given so much to the undead community, can't he dabble elsewhere?

(Anyone else want to see this movie narrated by Daniel Stern, ala. The Wonder Years?)

Raping the Dead: Volume 2

or: How to get blood stains off your ceiling. The ranting on remakes continues....

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010?)

Downsides:

• Freddy will be played by an up-and-coming pretty boy and his burn wounds will be replaced by cosmetic scars. Freddy will no longer be a murderous janitor and pedophile, but instead a misunderstood, and HOT, biology teacher whose classroom experiments go sadly awry; thus leaving him both vengeful and only slightly less hot.
• Instead of Nancy being intelligent, forthright and brave, well... she'll still be played by a teenager, and a girl. Only this time that sexy librarian innocence will be entirely due to her awkward glasses and not her ability to have a valuable thought (see: Laurie Strode in Rob Zombie's Halloween).
• The bits with Freddy emerging through the bedroom wall, Tina dragged in the body bag, and Johnny Depp as a geyser of blood, are some of those rare and supremely chilling images in horror cinema. This new version has a scene where a cat jumps out from, like, nowhere!
  
• Johnny Depp cameos as a narcoleptic teacher who happens to divulge every useful detail of Freddy's backstory, right before he drifts off to sleep...

Upsides:

• Wes Craven may get some due respect again. The last film in the Nightmare franchise (who's counting Freddy vs. Jason really) was the deliciously clever and undervalued Wes Craven's New Nightmare. It wasn't all that long ago really that Wes rode the Scream train to success, but hopefully he'll be able to get more of his original productions off the ground. Then again, for every Scream we have a Cursed. Yet who could live in a world without the admirably stupid Hills Have Eyes: Part II?
• Technical effects have vastly improved since the original film's release. That could mean a lot for those elaborate and terrifying dream sequences. It could also mean no rubber Mom mannequins being pulled through six inch windows. On second thought, this should have gone under downsides.
• The original ending kind of sucks. Not to the point that it derails any early strong points, but even Craven himself was dissatisfied. Things could change. This time I envision Nancy rescuing a child for some reason (remakes love to up the child quotient), battling Freddy with her newfound telekinetic abilities (remakes love to up the effects sequences), or being hauled off to a nut house, only to have the crazy wagon be driven by Freddy himself (remakes love to up the shitty and obvious).

I hope they keep:

• Nancy's mom hiding liquor. EVERYWHERE.
• Ambulance Assistant: We don't need a stretcher in there. We need a mop!
• Rod: Hey, up yours with a twirling lawnmower!

Hellraiser (2009)

Downsides:

• No tears please. Why waste good suffering when you can save it for the theatre?
• One truly good Hellraiser film exists, another that you might be able to defend, and like eight others that you can turn past on the Sci-Fi Channel if you want to catch Doug Bradley looking bored. Also, are the studios back on the PG-13 target? That's pain and no pleasure.
• A renewed success for the franchise could mean some fucking scary leather getups come Halloween.

Upsides:

• Clive Barker's source story is just twisted enough on its own to guarantee some general weirdness. Puzzle boxes and bondage-clad lust demons are the makings for interesting films... excluding any of the other Hellraiser films of course.
• Barker's 4,000 other projects currently in development hell might get the go ahead. How has he not been more prolific in film with such a grim, unforgettable debut and Candyman?
  

I hope they keep:

• The Chatterer. My choice for the Cenobite I'd be most scared to meet in person, and that's a high credit.
• Frank (bound and bloody): Je-sus wept... (followed by sinister laughter and ripping flesh)
• Frank (to Kristy, while wearing her father's face): Come to daddy!
• Homeless people are actually ancient winged demons. Who knew?

Quotable: Flirting with Disaster (1996)

"You are NOT B&B people!"

Obscure Beauty: David Lynch

"Faster and faster... And for a long time you wouldn't feel anything... Then you'd BURST into fire... Forever."