the wire... and why it's the best show on television

i'm sure not many of you have watched The Wire, for a couple of reasons-- one of them being that not many people have HBO to begin with. another being that not many of you have even heard of the Wire. another being that if you did see commercials for the show, you might not even be interested in it because their marketing sucks balls. another might just be that it's viewed as a cop show... and technically, it is a "cop show"... but it's so much more than just that.

the creator of the show has noted that not many people want to watch it because its plots are "complex" and the dialogue between the criminals on the show consist of "esoteric slang"-- whatever that means. either way, he's partly right. actually. he's totally right.

on the outside, the show is about cops trying to bring down a drug organization/organizations in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. on the inside... it's about the shades of grey between both the criminal world and the justice department. everyone on the show has their flaws... and everybody is effected by the institution they are a part of. it's funny... even some of the criminals are more human than the people on the "good" side. its style of writing has been compared to that of a "visual novel"... and i read an interview between the creator of the show and Nick Hornby (author of High Fidelity and About A Boy)-- Hornby stated that the show takes on a very Dickensian approach to street life. *i can't say that i can agree with that, only for the fact that i've only read one story by Charles Dickens and it involves ghosts and Jesus' Birthday.* though, the fact that it's being compared that is cool in itself.

i'm not gonna suck the show's dick any longer. all i'm gonna do is write a couple of reason why the show is amazing.

reason number 1:
Senator Clay Davis.
he's the senator of maryland (in the show, obviously) and he might just be the most morally complex/corrupt character ever. but the reason why he's so awesome is because the only word in his vocubalary is the word: "shit".
and i don't mean just the word in itself. the way he says it: he elongates the word and makes it so that it sounds like Shaft or Superfly was saying it.
here's an example.



are you not laughing? because every time i see his face-- i want to laugh my ass off, or lmao.


reason number 2:
Detective Bunk Moreland
he delivers the best monologues/dialogues ever. every line uttered by him is calibrated to either be the funniest thing you've ever heard... or the most insightful.
he also gets drunk all the time and thinks he can get any woman he wants. i mean why wouldn't he? he's bunk.



now that's both funny and insightful. btw, somewhere in this show-- he actually does really good police work.

reason number 3
Omar
omar is pretty much the most badass character in this fucking show. he's pretty much like robin hood... except instead of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor... he steals from drug dealers and gives it to nobody-- he does it to fuck with the drug dealers. he's got his own agenda on the show. he has no flaws... only that he's a human being, and not a machine. he's a huge gay... but that doesn't stop him from killing a couple of corner boys with a 40 calibur pistol. he's one of the best things about this show.



it's a long clip, i know. but if you watched the whole thing... you would have seen that omar goes to jail, straps on some phone books around his belly, and fucking stabs the shit out of some guy... just to get respect. this show teaches you about life. if it's your first day of school... you obviously have to stab someone to show everyone that you don't take shit from nobody.

reason number 4
the show contains a considerable amount of crackheads
i think that's enough to want to watch it, right?



this clip is from the third season. one of the main arcs of the third season is the creation of this little area in Baltimore where it's legal to do drugs. they called it "hamsterdam". i sometimes found this story arc to be utterly ridiculous. but most of the time it was really interesting.


i could go on and on with reasons. but the main reason that i like the show a lot... is that it seems very realistic. it's not like Lost or fuckin' Heroes (btw, i love these shows dearly). there are answers in every episode and people die. there are no monsters and there are no japanese time benders. just cops, crackheads, and Senator Clay Davis.

shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittt.

***

I'm coming back to this blog about 2 months later from when I wrote it initially on myspace. Reason? Well I wrote the blog while i was viewing the fifth and final season... and I felt if I really loved the show, I would voice my opinions on how it ended and whether or not i loved the way it ended. i will be revealing many important and heartbreaking details of what occurs in the final episodes of the series... so beware of said "spoilers"

I watched a video on youtube where David Simon was invited to some journalism lecture at USC (he used to be a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun), and he revealed that The Wire takes many elements from Greek tragedies as the backbone of it's overall story arc. He gave examples-- people like Stringer Bell and Bodie meeting their demise should come as no shock if you have the Greek tragedy notion in mind.

But the death of Omar Little, the show's most beloved character, met his demise in such a way that was so tragic and so subtle... that it was almost unfair. While trying to bring out Marlo to the streets, he walks into a bodega for his Newport Soft Packs, where a little fucking asshole, Kernard, shoots him in the head. He doesn't go down in flames... he just gets shot out of nowhere. Why is this so unfair? Because Omar has dodged death in so many more dramatic ways... I mean for fuck's sake, he jumped out of the 5th floor of an apartment building to escape the firefight between Snoop, Partlow, and Michael-- and he still came out alive! What was interesting though... was how my the next episode, I've already forgotten about Omar.

Statement being made by Simon-- once you're dead, you'll be remembered... but you're not a legend, you're just another dead guy. The police didn't really seem surprised to see Omar dead... he was just a dead body with evidence to incriminate Marlo. His status is nothing to them after he's dead. Every season Omar gets more badass and loveable because of his Robin Hood mentality and it's sad to see that Omar is just a forgotten figure in the streets and in the justice system.



R.I.P. Omar

Continuing.

The final episode of the Wire was about 90 minutes, 30 minutes longer than it's usual running time... making it seem like a fan's dream movie. Something that's great about the ending is that there's complete closure... yet it ends in a real specifically intentional way. What Simon is illustrating with the show is the theme of Cyclical-ity. Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses the theme a lot, especially in his book One Hundred Years of Solitude-- but Simon spent years developing that theme for The Wire. The show ends in such a way that Season 6 would just be the start of a "season 1". Ending with Michael having killed Snoop and now robbing drug dealers in a manner that Omar would have done-- with shotgun and all. Tragic Duquan following the path of Bubbles, who has actually been rehabilitated and now is on good terms with himself and his sister.

McNulty being forced to resign in one of the most bittersweet moments in television history, along with Lester Freeman's demotion to the pawn shop department. The whole homicide and major crimes unit gathering together at the local bar to celebrate his departure in a wake-style party. A beautiful moment. Marlo released from jail, goes legit, yet in one of the most satisfying scenes in the show, goes to a corner and starts shit with some corner boys and comes out victor, illustrating that, yes, he is still a hard-ass gangster. Partlow in jail hangs with Wee-Bay, muscle hanging with muscle. The New Day Co-Op still in action with a new leader, Slim Charles. Thank God he shot Cheese-- because he was fucking annoying the hell out of me. All is good... at least in terms of the way of things.

The show makes a couple of statements. The war on drugs will never end. The reason why? The institution in which one belongs to is always getting in the way of the problem, only to abide by the bigger picture-- that goes for the justice & education system, as well as the media, and definitely the streets. I already mentioned the cycle theme. All you can do now is watch the show for yourself. And if you don't like it... I won't hate you.

here's a video from youtube. it's the ending montage with a different song (gay) but it still looks pretty cool.



R.I.P. The Wire

frankenhooker

to continue my streak of shitty movie viewing... i present to you:

FRANKENHOOKER.



these are bold words but this film has got to be one of the most enjoyable films i've seen all year.
this is better than time chasers. better than robo vampire.
this is the epitome of all b-grade horror films. and then some.

the premise.

a mad scientist/medical school dropout living in new jersey studying electricity is hosting a birthday party for his father-in-law. his wife has bought her dad a lawnmower. in an attempt at teaching her dad how to mow the lawn with a remote control that controls the lawnmower... the lawnmower goes renegade and chops the wife in puzzle pieces, or as the reporter calls her: the salad that was Elizabeth.

the husband goes through depression and insanity while hosting a dinner for his wife's head, which he kept after the accident. he sets out on a plan to reconstruct his wife-- very much like frankenstein's monster. he decides to go to new york city (the only city on earth where you could obviously find spare body parts), in which he hires a couple of hookers through this pimp named Zorro.

a little info on zorro. he's a muscular pimp who dresses as if he just got out of the gym in 1989-- he's wearing a neon green tank-top and zebra pants. the only line he utters throughout the whole film is: "what the fuck". he's my favorite character in film.

zorro hooks the mad scientist up with some hookers and his plan is to give them tons of crack (he constructed the crack, synthetically, and the side effect-- spontaneous combustion, exemplified through an experiment done with a hamster/bunny). he goes to the city and takes them to some "by the hour" hotel and parties with them, kind of. the hookers get restless because he hasn't done anything sexual. they're getting pissed off until they see the synthetic crack in which one of the prosititutes yells in glee: "SUPER DRUGS!!" i kid you not.
they all start smoking crack until one of them blows. (f.y.i.-- there happens to be no gore or blood in this film).

all the hookers blow up, mad scientist takes the parts, while zorro comes in to the hotel room and is knocked out by one of the hookers' head while she combusts.

mad scientist leaves and recreates the wife out of the body parts into this:



the majority of hooker limbs have taken over her brain, i guess, and she is frankenhooker.

she walks to the city and hooks up with some suitors and they spontaneously combust. she goes into zorro's bar who is still pretty shocked from the whole spectacle the night before ("what the fuck!"). he sees the monster blowing some guy up into pieces and he pretty much follows her as the mad scientist takes her back home for repair. she's already killed like 3 people and the police haven't caught on-- i love that city.

the scientist repaired the hooker so that his wife is the one in control of the body-- except zorro is in back of the scientist and he chops off his head.

at the same time, all the extra hooker limbs that the scientist kept in a fridge have evolved into these weird limb creatures and they pretty much destroy zorro.

frankenhooker is obviously a well trained surgeon-- she sews back the scientist's head into a woman's body.

the end.


yes. the end. one of the most satisfying films i've seen all year.

here's a trailer:



this film is absolutely perfect.

i got a haircut.
it's all off.

time chasers, or tangents

i’m taking a break from studying for my government of america class to give my consistent reviews of terrible films.

this weekend i queued up Time Chasers... well actually, it was the Mystery Science Theater 3000 shitting on Time Chasers-- but it’s all relative... I technically watched the whole film, along with some commentary from a couple of robots and a comical genius.



Okay... so just from looking at the poster, what can you gather from what you could be watching in the subsequent future? Well, you have a large picture of a man’s face squinting. A Castelton T-shirt wearing, mullet sporting protagonist holding a gun as if he was some kind of rent-a-cop. A plane that seems to be coming out of a cheap Microsoft Word clip art of an explosion. An outer space background... which confuses me because no where in this film does anyone travel to outer space... there aren’t even any scenes during the night time, where you would see stars.

and then the tagline:
"His mission is to save the future. But time waits for no man..."

Yes... that is right-- time does not wait for any man. Man, I’m thinking about this tagline now and all i can think of is how this might just be the best piece of writing throughout the entire duration of the film-- and it’s not even spoken during it.

I guess I can stop my ranting for just a second and attempt to explain the film.
This guy with a mullet and large eyeglasses has created a time machine out of a private airplane. He lives alone and fakes a news story about his grandma skydiving for the first time. So this idiot journalist girl and this idiot mustachio’d idiot, who works for some corporation (which to my knowledge, specializes in nothing), go for the plane ride... but WAIT. There’s no grandma... he’s giving them a test ride on his time travel plane which enters some kind of green thumbprint-looking vortex that transports to the future-- 2041 to be exact.

2041 looks pretty much like 1981. People in neon and scooters. The only thing that could remotely be considered something from 2041 would be a town sign that says "the year 2041"... i’m not even kidding.

here’s a trailer for the new anniversary edition of Time Chasers:



that’s a gem right there.

Anyway... the plot gets dumber when the mullet wearing idiot signs a contract with the corporation to help, i don’t know, create more time machines? the villain of the film is the evil idiot CEO who uses the time machine for evil. man, i would’ve never though that an evil CEO would use a time machine for evil... that sounds preposterous, right?

The plot gets thicker when the mullet sporting idiot takes the idiot journalist out on a date in the time machine... where they travel to 2041 to have some lunch at a local town mall food court. except when they get there, it’s a dystopian wasteland... at least that’s what it looks like from the nintendo-like graphics of some computer on the plane.

They almost get shot by vagabonds and criminals/civilians... but they come back and confront the evil idiot CEO about the future. To their surprise, the idiot CEO already knew about the future... it’s what he wanted. So now the time machinist and the journalist go back in time to stop themselves from making the time machine.

this is the point where the movie makes no sense whatsoever... and in no point during the writing of the film did someone reasses the logic of what the fuck they are actually putting down on paper.

well they’re in the past now and they’re trying to stop themselves... but then the journalist dies. Now, mullet wearing idiot has to find himself and stop himself... but wait, the Evil CEO has come from the future and kidnapped the present day mullet idiot and journalist idiot, and has taken them to-- wait for it-- Revolutionary War America.

They land in the middle of a battle. The Minutemen actually are not surprised or even creeped to see these people from the future wearing different clothes and sporting some ridiculous haircuts. To say the least, the climax ends in this little section of the film during the war. The protagonist dies... but we still have the other version of the mullet idiot from the present. So everyone is alive except for the Evil idiot CEO who was killed through death by falling plane.

Once he gets back to the present... everything is fine. Nothing has changed.

WHAT THE FUCK?! Nothing has changed?!
Do they not realize that they have totally fucked with the space time continuum. People from the Revolutionary War gazed at people from the future. The EVIL CEO brought a present day fire-arm from the future and no one even brought it back when they went back to the future (ha.) So... if we’re following regular logic... wouldn’t that mean that someone got their hands on that fire-arm and suddenly used it. They literally just changed the future.

But no. This is Time Chasers. Logic does not matter. the only thing that matters is that your idiot mullet-sporting protagonist is alive... which to me is the worst part of the film.

here’s another clip with some great 90’s synth music:



I’m shitting on this film too much. It really is this bad... but it’s definitely enjoyable. But sometimes the movie just gets incredibly bad... and then sometimes it’s so bad that it takes too much energy to shit on it.

I give it 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

robo vampire

i don’t know if you keep up with my blogs but a couple of weeks ago i reviewed a film called: jesus christ vampire hunter. it seems that lately i’ve had the oppurtunity to watch real shittilly incredible cult films. so i guess i’m making it a trend for myself to review any enjoyably terrible film i happen to come across.

well this week’s edition of cult movie review, i watched Robo Vampire (1988).



to explain the plot of robo vampire is to explain the complexities of the space-time continuum... it seems almost impossible.
but i’ll give it a try thanks to my film analytical skills.
the movie is set in... i don’t know-- Vietnam? the Phillipines?
A drug cartel is in cooperation with Asian vampires, using their coffins as a means for transporting heroin to the West. With the help of some asian witch doctor, two white dudes (one of them wearing a t-shirt that says "Racing"), and the head vampire in a gorilla costume--they are able to expand their market to the United States.

A couple of things you should know about the vampires. First off, they’re Asian, second off they walk around in the daylight (?), and third-- they hop. Yeah, they don’t walk... they hop around as if they were on pogo sticks yet they’re not on pogo sticks. Here’s a clip of them hopping along with an appearance of the robocop, whom i have not started talking about as of yet:



ridiculous.

back to the plot. by the way, i’m still not 100% on the plot but i’ll give it a go anyway.

this group of people build a robot cop-- very much like robocop except shittier and with a poorly placed chin strap. Don’t be fooled by the poster of the film-- as you saw in the clip, Robocop does not actually star in the film. A pair of assholes thought it would be cool to put the real robocop in the cover of the film to give the illusion that you’re watching a prequel and/or sequel of the robocop movie.
the robot cop pretty much goes after the cartel.
but then these other people go after the cartel they’re trying to kill them as well as save these chicks that were kidnapped and raped.

This subplot involving this group infiltrating the cartel really has no relevance to the robocop plot-- it’s really just a useless subplot... and by useless i mean more scenes with shitty dubbed dialogue, sound effects, and gun battles.

Then there’s this ghost who is in love with the leader vampire gorilla.

so by the end of the film, the robocop is after the vampire clan. and... fuck this plot is hard to follow. i wonder why?

oh i know-- it’s because there’s two different films spliced into one.

Yeah. the director actually put clips from two different films to somehow make it coherent... well it failed at that since i’m totally confused by the plot.

but it doesn’t fucking matter. what matters is that you’ll enjoy this movie only for the pure ridiculousness of it. every scene is a funny scene. there’s no fucking way you won’t laugh at this true gem.

here’s another clip for you to sink your teeth into (see what i did there?):



so if you’re not busy-- just go to your local shitty vhs rental store and find robo vampire. you don’t even have to be drunk. stay sober and you’ll laugh.

btw-- i played smash brothers Brawl. i’ll fucking destroy you with snake.

jesus christ vampire hunter

yesterday i was over a friend's house and seeing as how we've had enough of virtual trivia games and jeopardy-- obviously the only solution to our post trivia game boredom would be to watch Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter .

when i saw the poster of the film i had a lot of expectations.



the poster has jesus, a lucha libre wrestler, and a girl in a red jumpsuit-- and some vampires in the bottom. from this poster, i gathered that this was going to be a harmless, over-the-top, gory, ridiculous flick about vampires, jesus, and mexican wrestler. well it could have been all those things, but it shy'd away from that concept.

the plot is that jesus is back on earth spreading the word. but these group of vampires are walking around... IN THE DAYLIGHT!!!! (btw, i think the only reason they have this concept is because the camera they were using probably did not shoot well at night... even though there were a limited amount of scenes in the dark) when a couple of goth-looking vampire chicks kill two of Jesus' most trusted disciples/priests, he decides to go all badass and start beating the shit out of them. he cuts his hair, shaves his cool hipster goatee, and sports some fly earrings-- and he's off to slay some vampires. with the help of his cool, slick, and attractive sleaze, Mary Magnum-- along with his trusted friend Santos (that's the Mexican wrestler if you didn't put two and two together)... they pretty much kick ass in the worst way.

there are moments throughout the movie where it tries to transcend genres-- like the musical scene? i mean it was an ambitious scene but it was pretty much a total farce. and there's the fight scenes. you kind of have to appreciate the low-budget aspect of the film... if you can do that, then you can enjoy the campiness of it. here's my favorite fight scene:



obviously treading matrix territory with everyone dressed in black and the cool and annoying techno music.

the only problem i had with this movie is that it didn't take advantage of its concept. obviously-- this is a stupid concept... why not embrace the concept by making it as over-the-top as possible? don't get me wrong-- there are scenes that are pretty over-the-top-- like when Santos throws a ton of tooth picks at a night club... of course all the tooth picks slay a couple of vampires. or when Jesus drinks some beer, blesses it, drinks it again, and spits it out in some vampire's face. but there could've been more blood. there could've been more corny lines. there could've been more blood, really-- just put a lot more gore and this movie will become the ultimate cult film... though it already is.

overall it was an okay movie. there's a scene where mary magnum was driving a motorcross bike where i got confused. there's lots of lesbians in the movie. and it made me realize that canada is full of unattractive people. i give it 3/5 in the corniness meter.

i think what saved the film from being downright bad, rather than novelty bad, is the sound quality of it. a lot of the actors' voices are not in sync... and sometimes i could not hear what they said.

just add this to your netflix queue, ok?