Old-school film short from 1977 that I fell in love with long ago at school. The next time someone needs the term 'order of magnitude' explained to 'em, this is what you show 'em.

Here's the YouTube link (when oh when will Insanejournal allow Tube embedding??)

Here's the Wikipedia summary.

' Uwe Boll, the German director behind such horrid video game adaptations as House of the Dead, BloodRayne, Dungeon Siege and Postal, has recently admitted that he would retire from making movies if enough people want him to stop. When FearNet mentioned to Boll a petition online signed by 18,000 people requesting that he cease making films, Boll responded that “18,000 is not enough to convince me.” So how much would be enough?

“One million,” Boll said. “Now we have a new goal.”

Indeed, now we have a goal. All we need is 980,000 more signatures on this petition and we can rid the world of future Boll-directed/produced cinematic atrocities. '

Do your bit for cinematic humanity - sign the petition. I have. 167,033 signatures so far...

Bill and Ted - no third movie. But they just greenlit a fucking remake.

Bogus.

' As in the original, Bill and Ted are high-school students who are in danger of flunking unless they create a "full presentation" on the subjects of all their classes. They travel through time and meet the historical figures they're supposed to have learned about, including Gandhi and Calamity Jane this time around.

The main differences are that the phone Bill and Ted use to travel through time isn't an old-school phone booth, but something "funkier." Their band is called the Atomic Gorillas instead of the Wyld Stallions. The script is supposedly full of "hip" pop culture references for today's kids, like Bill and Ted worrying they're going to miss The Dark Knight. No clue whether there's a George Carlin character this time around, or who might play him. There are a lot fewer "Whoas." '

David Morrell, great thriller writer, author of First Blood, reviews the new Rambo flick:

' I'm happy to report that overall I’m pleased. The level of violence might not be for everyone, but it has a serious intent. This is the first time that the tone of my novel FIRST BLOOD has been used in any of the movies. It's spot-on in terms of how I imagined the character—angry, burned-out, and filled with self-disgust because Rambo hates what he is and yet knows it's the only thing he does well. The character spends a lot of time in the rain as if trying to cleanse his soul. There's a nightmare scene involving vivid images from the three previous films (they indicate the emotional burden he carries). There's a scene in which Rambo forges a knife and talks to himself, basically admitting that he hates himself because all he knows is how to kill. At the start, Rambo is gathering cobras in the jungle, and he's so comfortable with them, it's as if, because of his past, the most developed part of him is his limbic brain. He has nothing to fear from another creature of death...

Another excellent element involves the film's archetypal, mythic overtones. Rambo is hardly ever called by his last name. Instead, he keeps being referred to as "the Boatman" because he earns his living with a boat on a river in Thailand. But after he's called "the Boatman" enough, I start thinking of the River Styx and the journey of death as depicted in Greek myth. Similarly, the knife-forging sequence reminds me of Hephaestus, the armorer of the Greek gods (in the sequence, Rambo even talks about whether God can forgive him for what he's done). Sly is definitely sophisticated enough to embed these sorts of allusions. The earlier Rambo movies were a combination of a Tarzan movie and a western. That is also the case here. The knife (again designed by master blade-maker Gil Hibben), the bow and arrow, Rambo racing through the jungle—these scenes are primal and breath-taking...

I think some elements could have been done better. The villains are superficial, to say the least. A lot could have been done with the connection between drug lords and the military in what the film calls Burma, dramatizing that money earned from the heroine trade motivates their ruthlessness. Instead, they’re merely depicted as psychopaths. In a baffling moment, heroine somehow gets equated with meth, which is something entirely different and has nothing to do with the poppies grown in that area of the world.

Otherwise, I think this film deserves a solid three stars. '

Two blogs of interest to my magical and alchemical colleagues:

The Secret Sun - blog of Christopher L Knowles, Jungian thinker and author of "Our Gods Wear Spandex", a consideration of superhero mythology/superheroes as mythology. Here's a recent piece on The Joker, the untimely death of Heath Ledger and that of the lead singer of Killing Joke - and how all that connects.

Inside the Cosmic Cube - also somewhat comic-influenced, but like Knowles exploring the symbolism of modern media - this time from a western-esoteric-alchemical angle. Here's blogger Adam Star on The Night Watch - both Rembrant and the Russian magic-war flick (but sadly not the Pratchett...). He also looks at Joker-as-alchemical-rubedo here.

After another delightful evening of dealing with bullshitting delusional fuckwadery at dark_christian (though please note this is the exception there, not the rule!) it was a joy to learn this:

' Empire caught up with Crank co-directors Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine recently and they spilled some details about the Crank sequel, set to shoot early next year. Warning: There are spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen the first film.

"Crank 2 will pick up exactly where Crank one ends," says Taylor. "It's a true sequel. Jason Statham will return. It's not a prequel, it's not his brother, it's not a dream sequence... '

Considering just how much stupid, all out *fun* the first Crank was, I'm looking forward to this immensely.

From Dark Horizons;
' Warner Bros. Pictures has picked up U.K. and Ireland distribution rights for Julian Doyle's "Chemical Wedding" says The Hollywood Reporter.
Penned by Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson, the supernatural horror thriller stars Simon Callow as a reincarnation of Aleister Crowley, once dubbed "the most evil man in Britain." '

Though it's a fun sounding idea, Bruce isn't the greatest writer - anyone actually manage to finish The Adventures of Iffy Boatrace?

Cast list from the otherwise empty IMDB entry has some nice hints:

Simon Callow ... Haddo
John Shrapnel ... Crowley
Kal Weber ... Mathers
Terence Bayler ... Professor Brent
Geoff Breton ... Young Symonds
Mat Fraser ... Ceremony Man
Helen Millar ... Rose
Lucy Cudden ... Lia

Haddo referring to Oliver Haddo, (the thinly disguised Crowley in Maugham's The Magician) one assumes. Mathers and Symonds and Rose and Lea probably guessable.

Also nice to see Mat Fraser, the Thalidomide Karate King, in the cast.

As for Shrapnel as Uncle Fester... yeah, it might work. Hell, John Stride made a good fist of it (!) in Snoo Wilson's play. I am keen to find out.

In a delightful turn of phrase, Kung Fu Monkey describes a "bad article on the current Writer's Guild/Studio negotiations" in the New York Times thus:

' The stuff in there -- "lead writer" and "junior writer", that "most screenwriters" get an upfront payment of $1 million dollars per screenplay (!!!!) ...

Boggling. For those of you not in the industry, this is roughly the equivalent of saying "Fees for teeth cleaning are split between the lead dentist and a secondary dental technician known as the Adjuct Toothologist, They are usually paid an upfront fee of warp drive crystals and a bed of golden vaginas. Then, ponies fight werewolves to determine residuals as proscribed by the ancient, inscrutable druid ways."

I am not exaggerating for effect. The Times article is precisely that stupid. '

Niiiice.

(The original article in the Times is here, the dissection which prompted KFM to comment is here.)