Worst Date Ever Involves Texting During Movie; Lawsuit, Accusations

I've gotten into the weird habit of watching "First Dates" on TV occasionally on Friday evenings. 

A first date at this movie was probalby the worst ever,
and ended with a small claims court lawsuit. 

It is a "reality show" in which people go on first dates and see if they establish a connection. It's oddly entertaining. 

Some couples seem to hit it off. Some dates are terrible. The guilty pleasure is watching how people looking for love find connections. 

However, the worst date ever wasn't on this TV show. It was in Austin Texas, when, according to the Austin (Texas) American Statesman, Brandon Vezmar, 37, of Austin took a 35 -year-old woman on a date to see a 3D showing of the movie "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2"

Veznar said the woman kept texting during the movie, and he got annoyed. "This is, like, one of my biggest pet peeves," Veznar said. 

Yeah, texting during a movie can be annoying, but what Vezmar did next was a little over the top. He's suing the woman for $17.31, the cost of the movie ticket.

He was particularly peeved that she got annoyed by Veznar's texting scolding, so she left, leaving him without a ride home. 

When the Austin American-Statesman informed the woman she was being sued by Vezmar, she said, "Oh my God.....This is crazy."

Well, yes. 

Sometimes, two annoyinig people can make magic together. However, in Austin, an obnoxiously texting woman and a litigious man couldn't make it work. 

How sad. Or not. 

On the bright side, the CEO of another Austin theater, the Alamo Drafthouse, has offered a $17.31 gift certificate to settle the lawsuit.  

Movie Songs Sometimes Suck. This One DEFINITELY Does Not

I've decided "Bad Seed Rising" by the band Bad Seed Rsing (confused yet?)
is one of my favorite movie theme songs.  

Sometimes songs from movies are great, others, not so much.

Many of the great ones are from James Bond films. Adele's "Skyfall" comes to mind, and there are many more.   

Another good one to my mind is from the James Bond-ish spoof "Spy," the Melissa McCarthy comedy that came out a year or two ago.

The song from "Spy" is "Bad Seed Rising" and the tune has the best attitude.  Confusingly, sort of, the name of the band is also Bad Seed Rising. They're pretty damn good, though.

"The girl ain't a good girl no more!"

Words to live by, for sure. 

Here's the music video, which contains scenes from "Spy"

No, That Movie Is Not "A Comedic Masterstroke"

No, reviewer AA Dowd did NOT say this
movie was "a comedic masterstroke."  

I've got new evidence that those blurbs you see from critics in movie advertisements aren't what they seem.

Yeah, they always say the movie was terrific, an Oscar contender, boffo, all that.

You can never believe those blurbs, can you?

So it was that the cover on a Canadian-produced DVD of a movie called "Nailed" quoted movie reviewer A.A. Dowd as calling it "a comedic masterstroke."

Consumerist says "Nailed" was a widely ignored movie that was released in the United States after many people abandoned working on the film in frustration. Its American title was  "Accidental Love."

Here is the full quote from Dowd's review of "Nailed" that didn't appear on the DVD cover, according to Consumerist:

"To be fair to whoever refashioned "Accidental Love" from the abandoned scraps of "Nailed," there's little reason to believe that the ideal, untroubled version of the material would have been a comedic masterstroke."

Yeah, Dowd really didn't like the movie. So much for a comedic masterstroke.

Dowd wrote an open letter to Mongrel Media which put out the DVD with the false blurb, calling them out on it.  He wrote:

"Framing me as a big fan of Nailed isn't just a lie, it's an attack on my critical reputation. What if someone reads that and really thinks I see a "comedic masterwork" in "Nailed."? They'll never trust me on a comedy again."

 Dowd asked for an apology, and got said apology from Mongrel Media. Future copies of this pretty bad movie won't have Dowd's out of context blurb about it.

So here's my review: A masterful performance by Dowd! And that's not even taken out of context!

Horror: "Sharknado" Apparently Inspiring Other Wacko Movies

Well, I guess it was inevitable.

"Sharknado" that ridiculous movie about a tornado coming ashore in Los Angeles and dropping man eating sharks to terrorize the city's residents, became the talk of the summer.

Did this ridiculous movie launch a bunch
of imitators and can I join the bandwagon?  

Why, I don't know. It sure is beyond over the top, but still.

The worst effect of the Sharknado summer sensation is inspiring other movie makers who are trying to top the wacko Sharknado.

A contender that's getting some attention is something called "Squirrels."  Yes. Squirrels. Apparently in this movie, a gas company's work is disrupting the environment. The squirrels get royally pissed off and start brutally attacking humans.

Yeah. Could happen. Maybe we should all stay safe and avoid squirrel infested forests near fracking sites.

This squirrel movie hasn't been made yet, but there is a trailer. It's worth the watch if you want your daily groan, that's for sure.

This weird horror movie trend is giving me ideas. I could use some money, so maybe I could Kickstart some  ideas for a sort of Vermont based horror movie. Anybody in? I promise not to create Mac Parker style fiasco.

Here's some rough drafts of what I'm talking about:

"Cownado" A manure pit explosion in Enosburg, Vermont sends crazed, man eating cows raining down on St. Albans during their annual maple festival. St. Albans seems doomed until a five year old kid calms the bovines down with maple creemees.

"Hipster Horror"  A bad batch of artisan, free range, organic microbrew ends up in the hands of the oh-so-cool hipsters that always hang around Burlington, turning them into zombies that attack the tourists from Quebec. Cases of Old Milwaukee Light save the day.

"Mount Peculiar" An evil executive from a manufacturer of genetically altered seeds aims to make state lawmakers in Montpelier do their bidding by giving the legislature "special" corn to much on during a Chamber of Commerce barbecue. The plan goes awry when the genetically altered corn turns the lawmakers in uber-liberal Vermont into right wing Tea Party types. A civil war results, the state is split in half and the Northeast Kingdom becomes the country of "Teaghanistan."

"RutVegas" The city of Rutland is often jokingly called Rutvegas, but the joke is on Vermont in this movie, when a meth dealer from upstate New York arrives in town, sells a weird batch of the meth to local residents, who go on a rampage, turning quiet Rutland into a dazzling gambling mecca that makes Las Vegas look like Dubuque on a particularly quiet evening.

All these ideas could happen, right? Please respond to this blog to donate to these movies.

Laughing at Temper Tantrums

A useful viral video is going around: A supercut of film scenes showing people having temper tantrums.

Next time you get furiously angry, watch the video so you'll see how silly you look when you start throwing things around.

In the video, I especially like the old movie with the angry bald guy they keep flashing back to.  If nothing else, the guy is persistent. Anyone know which movie that's from?

Anyway, here's the fun clip:

"Expendables 2" is So Bad It's Brilliant

As a connoisseur of the tacky and the campy, I went to see the "Expendables 2" with Jeff this weekend.

It was so worth it.

A classic bad movie, The Expendables stars a whole bunch of washed up, has- been action movie heroes shooting their way through scenic Nepal and Albania.

Don't ask.

Of course, the movie ended up as the winner at the box office this weekend, which either means that American movie audiences have no taste, or everyone loves groaningly bad movies, like me.

For the actors, the movie was meant as a self-mocking send up.  And it was proof that aging movie stars don't, well, age well.

The star, and the leader of the band of heroes in the movie, Sylvester Stallone, wore a weird little black mustache in which had a sort of Snidely Whiplash effect, which was odd, since he was supposed to be the good guy. Isn't Stallone also a little old to have no gray hair? None?

Dolph Lundgren spent the movie trying to channel Gary Busey except in a more insane, menacing way. Dolph did manage a few words and quite a few grunts, so that's an accomplishment for him.

Steven Seagal was the bad guy, and spent most of the movie wearing these sunglasses that I always saw on Liz Taylor in paparazzi shots from the 1970s.

The film started with the usual action movie high body count, this time in Nepal, where the Expendables rescued Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is being held hostage by an evil Chinese billionaire and his band of thugs who had made poor Arnold wear a hood that resembled a badly soiled KKK hat.

Or maybe it was a dunce cap, as that would have been more fitting.

The Expendables quickly dispatched the ugly thugs in Nepal, spilling enough fake red blood to fill Lake Superior. Then they flew off in their decrepit plane, bringing along our Chinese billlionaire. They put a parachute on him, and dropped him safely onto a rural Chinese landscape, thereby keeping the evil billionaire alive for use in a sequel.

For unknown reasons, Bruce Willis then made the troupe head on off to Albania, where they were supposed to retrieve a computer code from a crashed airplane, with the help of a lovely Chinese heroine, made pretty and pouty by half the world's supply of collagen injected into her lower lip.

Of course, complications ensued with the evil Steven Seagal in his sunglasses, which offered the excuse for lots more explosions and bullets and gunfire and blood and general messiness. The Expendables were made even more mad at Seagal because he killed the youngest, most sensitive member of the group, and the only one who could marginally act.

Schwarzenegger kept popping up, announcing his presence with his trademark, "I'm back!" Finally, Willis, who had eventually joined the noisy festivities in Albania, said "You've been back too many times already."

Which prompted the funniest line of the movie, which came from Jeff, not the movie. Jeff leaned over and whispered to me, "You've got that right."

It seems if this was a real military unit, they'd be written up for wastefulness. I mean, why shoot a guy in the chest with 100 rounds from a machine gun when one or two bullets would do? The answer is, it affords an opportunity for one of the characters to tell our victim. "Rest in pieces."

Alrighty, then.

Schwarzengger appears again. (I'm back!) just in time to rescue the Expendables and a couple hundred villagers from a mine that Seagal had blown up, just for fun. (Seagal and his goons had already retrieved most of the world's supply of plutonium cannisters from the mine, so they can threaten the world. Again, just for fun.)

It was lucky that Arnold had one of those giant rock cutting machines to cut into the mine and rescue everyone. . Everyone should have a tractor-trailer sized mine boring machine in their garage like Arnold apparently does, just in case.

We are coming to the end of the movie now, (spoiler alert!) with a climatic shoot up scene which appears to take place in the Tirana, Albania main airport terminal.  It does seem nice enough that, although the fighting got off to a quick start, it appears they allowed people in the terminal to flee. With their luggage, since I didn't see Samsonite in the subsequent action sequence.

And that's a good thing. Who wants to go to Tirana, Albania, only to have their luggage shot full of holes by a grim Sylvester Stallone, firing away like he does through most of the movie?

It was also very nice of our merry band to not break any of the liquor bottles at the airport bar, even though the entire rest of the terminal was torn to pieces with their machine guns.

Seagal did make a mess with the plutonium, spilling cannisters of the stuff all over the airport, for tourists to take home later as souveniers. "Look ma! I brought you some plutonium back from Albania! It glows!"

You can probably already predict the ending. (Seagal might not be in the sequel, but you never know) However, with so much trouble in the world, and with "Expendables 2's" success at the box office, you can expect more explosive episodes of this movie.

Coming to a theater near you! Expendables 3! Renamed the Expandables, given their middle aged pot bellies by the time the next version comes out.