A Weekend Of Watching Stuff

It has been a weekend of sore throats and ungodly things coughed up in the morning. It has been a weekend of only leaving the house to buy a new pair of pants. It has been a weekend of drinking beer, orange juice, and hot toddys while enjoying Girlfriend's onion-y, cheesy homemade omelets. But mostly, it has been a weekend of sitting on my fat butt in front of the television, consuming the entirety of our Netflix shipment in a manner that shouts "Grumpy Hermit!!!" in much the same way that groups of fleeing Japanese people shouted, "Godzilla!!!"

Herewith, because I've literally done nothing else of interest over the past three days, the judgements passed down on all that I have watched...

The Apartment - I have no idea why it's taken me twenty-seven and a half years to see this wonderful, classic film, but it has. There was probably just always something good on TV, or maybe I was constantly distracted by a large plate of nachos, but really I don't know. Anyway, it's Jack Lemmon and it's Fred MacMurry and it's Shirley McClaine (who was a total babe back in 1960), and they form a love triangle that makes your heart crack into several pieces that mope around and listen to the saddest songs from Sinatra's back catalogue. The baseline emotion for The Apartment is an aching loneliness, but filmmaker Billy Wilder presents it to us with a glossy sheen of optimism and daffy humor; you're dying for the characters a little bit as you laugh a whole bunch. No easy feat. Oh, the plot! Doye, sorry... It's about a bachelor (Lemmon) who, in a bid to move up in his soul-crushing insurance job, lets all the company executives use his apartment as a place to bring their mistresses and assorted whores. Naturally, he ends up falling for a girl (McClaine) who just happens to "belong" to the Big Boss (MacMurry, a loooooong way from Steve Douglas). So, yeah... great flick, well-crafted and it packs an emotional wallop like a Sonny Liston roundhouse. Check it out if you haven't seen it and then send me a thank-you card with $20 inside. Don't forget the money or I'll hunt you down.

Monster Rain - This was an hour long stand-up special from comedian Jim Norton. I'm actually not entirely sure why I rented it, but it was good for a few laughs. Nothing groundbreaking, though, and I wasn't at any point gasping for breath but... you know... entertaining enough, as it goes. It should be noted that he's really not a comedian suited to the tastes of the general populous. Filthy, filthy humor... again, generally pretty funny, but still... if you're not comfortable with in-depth discussions of sexual perversions, then you might want to look up some old Bill Cosby DVDs or something. So... yeah. Basically, it's an experience that's best described by using the phrases "I guess" and "if you're into that sort of thing" a lot.

The Ten - This was a movie by the guys who did the balls-out hilarious Wet, Hot, American Summer, and it consists of a bunch of short films based on the Ten Commandments (the actual list, not the Charlton Heston movie). It was okay. I get the impression that it was fucking hysterical while they were writing the film, and really, really funny while they were shooting it, and by the time it made it's way to my DVD player, it was just kinda, sorta, occasionally-I'd-chuckle, witty-would-describe-it-better-than-funny, whatever, whatever, whatever. It's certainly different, I'll give it that. Definitely not as good as the aforementioned and now-acronymed WHAS. But there are lots of cool, hip, indie cameos to go, "hey, it's that guy/girl" at, and you get to see Winona Rider simulate sex with a ventriloquist dummy, so... you know... it's got those things going for it... for what it's worth... um, yeah...

The Complete Denis Leary - More stand-up, this time a DVD that included Leary's No Cure for Cancer and Lock n' Load, both of which were big influences on me as a high schooler with authority issues who took comfort in screaming, angry entertainment wherever I could find it. Watching them today... um... yeah, they don't really hold the appeal that they once did. They, and he, just aren't funny anymore. Now, admittedly, I feel this way partially because I've since learned of Leary's never proven (though hard to deny) plagiarism of material from God-amongst-comics Bill Hicks. But mostly, it's just that I've gotten to the point where a comedian has to do more than yell really loud and be a spaz to get me to laugh. Really raunchy sex jokes usually do the trick.

Sorcerer - Let me get the negative thing out of the way first. The title comes from the word itself that happens to be painted on the side of one of the trucks used to transport dynamite through the jungle. It is never referenced by the cast and it only shows up on camera a couple of times. Director William Friedkin claims that the film is titled as such as a way of acknowledging the "wizard of fate" that controls the characters actions. This is, and I'm sure you'll agree, completely retarded. Girlfriend suggested that they should have named the movie "Boom Trucks," and she's dead-on; I'd see a movie called "Boom Trucks" again and again and again, as would the rest of America. At any rate, dumbass title aside, Sorcerer was actually a pretty great film. It does, however, take a little while to get going; there's four... four... prologues, and they don't even get to the actual plot of the film until about the 60min mark. Still, though... worth your valuable time, particularly if you're a fan of manly, brawny flicks that splash around testosterone like so much Brut in a YMCA locker room. Roy Scheider, looking like a gristly strip of cheap, diner steak, gives his usual solid performance, and there's this whole big sequence where they try to drive the trucks over a rickety, rotting suspension bridge that's just totally out of control. Worth a look, for sure, but maybe bring a book or a Rubik's Cube to mess around with until the part where the oil refinery blows up.