What, are all 3.5 of you in Charmin’s pocket?
Bookshelf Battle
The only site where new bestsellers are forced to do battle for space on a nerd's bookshelf.
Author Archives: bookshelfbattle
Movie Review – The Voices (2015)
Your dog says behave. Your cat says be bad. What to do? Why, read this review, of course.
SPOILER ALERT – I can’t really get into much of this film without giving it all away, so for now, if you haven’t seen it and your stomach isn’t turned by the thought of guts, gore, murder and also, the fact that somehow this is a comedy (a dark one) then go ahead and watch it on Netflix, then report back here to discuss in the comments.
I caught this at random, just searching through Netflix for something to watch and was surprised that I had never heard of this one. It’s got Ryan Reynolds and Anna Kendrick and it’s been out for so long yet it fell below my radar.
Moreover, Ryan Reynolds does some honest to God acting in this flick. You laugh, but I think that even Double-R would admit he has been depending on a snarky, over confident, self-absorbed schtick for a long time now.
Here, RR plays someone different, nay, three someones. First, he’s Jerry, a shy, socially awkward bathtub factory worker. To his coworkers, he’s a bit of an odd duck yet still a member of the team.
In his personal life, he’s clearly bananas. Living in an apartment above a bowling alley, he talks to his pets – Bosco the dog and Mr. Whiskers the cat. Bosco is Jerry’s good side so naturally, the cat is the villain. Bosco advises Jerry to behave while Mr. Whiskers urges Jerry to give in to his deepest, darkest impulses.
Usually, Bosco wins, until a fateful night when Jerry scores a date with the babe of his dreams, Fiona (Gemma Arterton). Alas, Jerry accidentally kills Fiona and Mr. Whiskers takes advantage of this to push Jerry over the line and urge him to kill again, this time on purpose.
Potentially in the crosshairs is Lisa (Anna Kendrick), another coworker who has harbored a longtime crush on Jerry. Her fate will depend on whether Jerry starts paying more attention to his good pet or his bad pet.
From a writing standpoint (and look away for this is a big SPOILER), Jerry’s medication plays a big role from a “show, don’t tell” perspective. Prior to the chaos, Jerry has been seeing Dr. Warren (Jacki Weaver) for treatment related to a traumatic childhood.
She urges Jerry to take his medication. When he doesn’t, his world is happy, calm, peaceful. He believes he has a pretty comfortable, sweet life, living in a nice, swanky apartment with his best four-legged buds. Heck, the dismembered head of Fiona, now kept in his fridge, even talks to him, saying all the sweet nothings he longed to hear from her.
What happens when he takes the medication? Reality sets in, and it’s a grim one. The apartment isn’t a nice place to live at all. It’s filled to the brim with filth – dog and cat poop, unwashed dishes, various warning signs that this wack job has not been taking care of himself for quite some time, as well as the bloody remains of his victim. Worse for Jerry, his pets don’t even talk. They’re just a cat and a dog. And yikes! Fiona is no longer a happy go lucky talking head but as you might have guessed, a silent, rotting head.
As Dr. Warren later explains with advice that could help everyone, no matter their level of crazy, most people hear “voices” though to most people, those “voices” come across as thoughts – ideas of self-loathing, disappointment, urges to do bad things and most people know well enough to push those thoughts aside and not be consumed by them. Others, like Jerry, hear literal voices and create false worlds to avoid reality.
Scary, dark, funny though it seems like it shouldn’t be, the film has, surprisingly, a good message about facing reality, warts and all, learning to accept ourselves, rally around our strengths, forgive ourselves for our weaknesses, confront problems rather than pretend they aren’t there, to not live in a fantasy land because improving the real world around is often too hard.
It’s a good film where Ryan actually convinces me that he’s shy and awkward even though he’s anything but and to boot, he hams it up as an angelic dog and devilish cat.
It’s a good flick that probably deserved a little more critical acclaim than it got so its worth a watch, unless you aren’t into comedies about crazy men who talk to heads and killer kitties, then you know, don’t watch it.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Daily Discussion with BQB – The Oscars Add Best Popular Film Category
You know, 3.5 readers, I’m actually old enough to recall when it wasn’t entirely impossible for a popular film to also be an Oscar film. Sure, even when I was younger, the Oscars were known for pretentious snobbery, but movies like “Braveheart” or “The Departed” were well received by the public as well as having Oscar potential.
This is new category is laden with tacit admissions: 1) They’re admitting the films they nominate are basically just high falutin’ tripe 2) they’ll never, ever give the gold to a comic book movie.
You might forget that “The Dark Knight” was nominated for Best Picture in 2008 and funny, it was added to Netflix recently. I rewatched it over the weekend and was struck at how relevant it is – how longstanding evil can’t be defeated without great sacrifice, how sometimes defeating evil requires a man to get down into the muck, how there has to be darkness before there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, plus the immortal debate over whether or not all men are corruptible given the right circumstances.
Didn’t win. Had an asshole dressed as a bat.
My guess as to why are they doing this? 1) Back in the day, people would actually become fans of a film and would watch the Oscars to see if their favorite movie wins. Why, I recall people openly debating which films were the best…because they’d seen them.
No one saw the films this past year and if they did, the convo would be, “What, you think the film about the deaf woman who fucks a fish monster is better than the film about the grad student who statutorily rapes his employer’s teenage son? How dare you?!”
Second, there is a movement in all walks of life for minorities to be treated equally everywhere and that should be no different in film. So…the issue is that Oscar films usually deal with heavy subjects, so if a movie featuring black people wins, the black people are usually portrayed as slaves, or downtrodden, poor, caught in an oppressive system…and it’s not that I’m saying those films aren’t important but…
…oh well the hell. They’re probably doing this because they want “Black Panther” to win an Oscar but they can’t bring themselves to give a gold statue for best picture to a movie about superheroes, even if the movie was able to use sci fi and comic book elements that a) appeal to young people and b) do a better job of explaining the historical arguments of how to obtain civil rights for African Americans.
Honestly, an argument could be made that BP deserves Best Pic outright and this could be Oscar night’s one chance to say hey, we aren’t snooty, we gave it to a super hero film.
But they just can’t do it.
Besides the Black Panther argument, black people (well, I don’t mean to speak for them so if I have any black readers feel free to educate me but I think I’m right)…they don’t ALWAYS want to watch TV and see black people as either slaves or downtrodden people. Sometimes they want to see black people living life, having fun, going on adventures and so on. To that end, a movie like “Girls Trip” might take home some gold.
Aside from the “Oscars So White” issue, I think the Academy is wrestling with its view that popular and/or comic booky/action/comedy/horror or fun or blockbuster popcorn films are taking on more and more social issues. “Captain America: Winter Soldier” for example looked into whether we are sacrificing our right to privacy by putting so much of our lives onto the Internet – data for the government to mine and use and abuse.
I know the Academy prefers their precious, snooty little films about Cold War fish fucking but it wouldn’t hurt them to just give the award to a super hero movie one time…especially one like BP with a lot of cultural significance…and then they could go on to give the film to a snooty fish fucking film next year.
In the early 2000s, they gave the gold to one of the LOTR films, a popular, high grossing film, and then went on to give it to snooty films in following years.
What say you, 3.5 readers?
Have a nice day 3.5 readers
That is all.
BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – Swordfish (2001)
Halle Berry’s titties.
For years, that’s all I remembered about this film – that (those?) and also that it seemed kind of dumb at the time.
In the early 2000s, you couldn’t have asked for a better collection of actors. John Travolta was knee deep in his “Pulp Fiction” career recovery. Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry were fresh off of being X-Men (Wolverine and Storm, respectively). Meanwhile, Don Cheadle was in, well, everything.
But…sometimes you can take a bunch of awesome things, like graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate and create something awesome, like s’mores. And sometimes you can take some awesome things, like pizza, beer and an all night dance party and end up puking your guts out.
In other words, the actors were great but the plot sort of came across as though a bunch of writers got together and said, “Let’s just bypass this whole plot thing and have a lot of awesome explosions, action and get Halle Berry to gratuitously flash her funbags for no reason.
Interestingly enough, I caught this on Netflix after having not seen it since I did in the movie theater oh so many years ago. And for the first hour or so, I recalled why I thought the movie blew chunks in the first place.
Jackman plays Stanley Jobson, supposedly the world’s greatest hacker, currently on parole after pissing off the government with his hackery. With a life reduced to poverty, he’s forced into becoming a hacker for Gabriel (Travolta) a mysterious, off-the-books, anti-terrorist operation runner.
The idea sounds awesome in theory but in practice, it’s a lot of just running around, things exploding, Halle Berry eating Twizzlers in a bizarre effort to seem interesting (she already was and didn’t need candy), and Travolta chewing scenery as he hams up his (to the best of my recollection) first villain role with great relish and gusto.
Well, if it sucks then why am I recommending it? Because, in hindsight, the last half of the film is eerily prophetic.
You see, this film was released in the summer of 2001, a mere three months before the 9/11 attack. For most of the film, Gabriel comes across as a psychopath who just wants Jobson to use his hacking skills to score some cash.
However, we learn (spoiler) that Gabriel was never just a bank robber, but in fact, he’s running his own anti-terror unit. As he explains, any time a terrorist attacks American interests, he’ll use the cash to fund his own private Army that will hit the terrorists back tenfold. Why, if he learns that countries are harboring terrorists, he’ll hit those countries back as well. Uncle Sam doesn’t want to get his hands dirty, so he’ll do it for him.
Three months before 9/11, the idea was sort of a throwaway. Sure there were terrorist attacks for years before 9/11, and Americans were vaguely aware of the existence of Osama Bin Laden due to attacks on American embassies in Africa and on the USS Cole, for example.
But the idea that a 9/11 could happen was inconceivable.
At the end of the film, Gabriel tries to convince Stanley that he was never the bad guy. He poses a question to Stanley – if it were possible to develop a cure to all diseases known to man, but in doing so, one child would have to die, would Stanley do it?
Stanley answers no. It would be immoral to let the child die. Gabriel argues that it would be immoral to let so many die just to save one life. The greater good.
Yes, three months before 9/11 I was just a young adult in the early part of my life, happy go lucky and carefree and I wrote the film off as just a fun diversion and a chance to see some delicious caramel flavored titties.
What I wouldn’t realize until 17 years later is that this relatively obscure action flick posed, right before 9/11, the great question that has plagued, and alas, even torn this country apart, namely – how hard is too hard when it comes to fighting terrorism? Is it moral to go to war overseas in the hope of stopping it? Is it moral not to, knowing that if terrorists are rooted out of hiding, they may kill Americans at home?
Whether it is moral to bring the fight to the terrorists or to just live life and accept terrorism as just another sad part of life (i.e. “the new normal”) has been the main source of feuding between conservatives and liberals for nearly two decades now.
Terrorists hiding in other countries. America fighting back. Shadow ops to take the baddies out.
Sigh. We had an early warning in the most unlikely of places, that being a cockamamie action film that rested largely on fake CGI action and real titties.
Very real titties.
I love you Halle. You tried to save America with your titties and never got the credit you deserve…until now.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy…mainly for the second half and only if you think about the questions raised by the second half in the context that this film was released three months before 9/11.
America Must Embrace Bidets
Hey 3.5 readers. BQB here.
As you know, I’m a passionate activist for a number of causes:
- Rights of the ugly, including the #OscarsSoPretty movement to get more ugly actors winning Oscar gold
- Finding a cure for Lightning Infused Toaster Pastry Toilet Death
- Getting nearly extinct giraffes to increase their numbers by encouraging them to fuck, even though their long necks put their heads in different time zones when their bodies get together so they have no way to know if their partners are enjoying the act of hot, sweaty giraffe coitus.
You thought uggos, people who eat lightning in pastry form and horny giraffes were my only concerns but nay, I have been thinking a lot about a new cause as of late.
Bidets. Yes, bidets.
As an American, it pains me to say the French are right about something, but they are right about this. The typical frog bathroom (can I say that in the current year?) looks thusly:
It’s got a toilet (I assume off to the left) and another device that kind of looks like a toilet but really its a water jet that shoots water up your dumper. This idea is so ingenious that it almost makes you wonder why the French are so allegedly smelly.
What does wiping with toilet paper get you? A brief reprieve. But be honest. Your butt is usually left sore and itchy and hours later you’ll still find little pieces of paper in your tucas.
If you see a stain on a table, do you dab it with a dry cloth and then go, “Eh, that’s the best I can do now, I’ll get the rest later?”
No. You spritz it with some Fantastic or Formula 409 or whatever household cleaner you got and rub, rub, rub until that stain is gone.
Why are you going to walk around with poo remnants in your fudge factory when this device exists?
First, think of the trees that will be saved. Entire rain forests will be preserved. Parrots and alligators and chimps and all kinds of jungle creatures will be able to frolic and sing and dance and fuck because you chose to shoot a calm, cooling, soothing water jet up your backdoor rather than, let’s face it, agitate your anal cavity with what basically adds up to disposable cloth sandpaper.
If you’re not a caveman, you’re going to shower at the end of the day, and if you do it properly, the water will obliterate any Hershey chunks you didn’t get during your wipe session earlier that day.
But don’t you want that fresh feeling all day? Seriously. Shitting is stressful. It’s gross. It’s disgusting. But once you get that water up your heiney hole it’s like the poop never happened in the first place.
There has got to be a bidet in every bathroom in America posthaste. It’s gotta happen and this will be my new cause.
Uggos, lightning eaters, and giraffe fuckers (meaning giraffes who want consensual sex with other giraffes and not humans who want to fuck giraffes), I will still fight your fight, but I believe the bidet problem must be moved to the forefront of my advocacy.
What do you think, 3.5 readers? Do you agree with me, that there should be a butt water jet in every home, or are you a two-bit shill for big toilet paper who thinks that parrot houses should be destroyed so people can torture their sphincters until the end of time?
Discuss in the comments.
Hello
Just a quick hello. How are you, 3.5 readers? Are there still 3.5 of you?
Movie Review – The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)
Espionage, intrigue, and vag jokes. So many vag jokes.
BQB here with a review of “The Spy Who Dumped Me.”
I liked this movie. It’s a comedy that was self-aware and didn’t take itself too seriously. Jokes for the sake of humor that aren’t trying to educate you on a higher level.
Mila Kunis plays Audrey, a supermarket cashier who is dumped by her boyfriend, who, as it turns out, was a spy behind her back. Blah, blah, blah, hijinx ensue and Audrey finds herself tied up in international mischief which can only be cured if she gets a flash drive left behind by her ex into the right hands.
Backing Audrey up is her BFF Morgan (Kate McKinnon, finally in her big screen chance to shine.) Morgan lives larger than life and encourages Audrey to embrace her wild side, often to hilarious results. True, Kate is no stranger to film, especially after having been 1/4 of the “Ghostbusters” remake crew. However, she gets a lot of screen time here, more so than usual, and she makes the most of it.
I can’t get into anymore without giving it all away, but it’s a rare comedy that makes you laugh in this age where jokes are often watered down or pulled out to spare feelings. The action scenes are great too. There’s a lot of death and destruction and somehow that sounds like it wouldn’t be funny…except when two amateurs are experiencing it then yeah, somehow, it makes you laugh.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – Eraser (1996)
Smile, 3.5 readers. You’ve just been erased.
Scrolling through Netflix last night with a bowl of pasta in hand, I caught this flick and was transported to me teen years, to a time when seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger on a movie poster meant the film was guaranteed to be good (well, good to fans of action flicks, anyway.)
As it turns out, that era was soon to come to an end. In my mind, this movie is Schwarzenegger’s last good film. In the years since, he’s had a couple of flicks that were mildly OK or at least tolerable, and some bona fide garbage, but at any rate, this is the last movie he made that I remember being awesome.
Side note: Maybe he disagrees, but in hindsight, I think it was a mistake for Arnold to run for Governor of Cal-eee-fornia. Maybe he did it because he thought he was getting older and his movie days were behind him, but I think he might have missed a shot to transition into more seasoned roles. Maybe he might have, gasp, found an Oscar worthy vehicle.
I know. He’s a giant weightlifter action star with an Austrian accent but he also had a lot of Hollywood pull. He could have found his Oscar film. Is it too late now? I don’t know.
Anyway. Back to the movie. This film takes us into the Federal Witness Protection program. Spoiler alert: our first intro into this world is when Arnold evacuates a mobster turned witness and his wife who are about to get whacked.
Arnold dumps ketchup all over the mobster and his wife, takes a polaroid, puts it into the pocket of one of two hit men he’s offed. He then replaces the husband and wife with corpse ringers pilfered from a morgue and drags the hit men’s bodies to the front lawn. He shoots one, then puts the gun in the other’s hand.
The mobster (Robert Pastorelli, by the way) is confused. Arnold, as his character, US Marshall John Kruger, explains, “They killed you, then turned on each other.”
Pastorelli replies, “Right. Sons of bitches!”
I don’t know why, but that line made me laugh as a kid and so many years later it still does.
As the movie goes on, I saw a lot of stars I haven’t seen in a long time – James Caan as the film’s villain, Vanessa Williams as the witness Arnie must rescue and James Coburn as the head of the witness protection program. Oh, and that guy who plays Roger in “Mad Men” has a bit part as an FBI agent. Sometimes it’s fun to watch old movies and catch actors in parts before they get big.
Alas, if only we had known that not too long after this film, Arnie’s movie career went into the witness program. It’s not dead, it’s just in hiding – probably in a farm house in rural Illinois, secluded from civilization and far away from anything resembling a restaurant that can provide a good meal. Maybe it will come out of hiding someday.
For now, it’s just Arnie doing the old actor’s cash-in routine – lots of cash grab sequels to films Gen Xers feel nostalgia for. As if wrecking “Terminator” with “Genisys” wasn’t enough (Terminators with gray hair, my ass), he’ll be out with a new Conan film I hear. Something tells me he’ll be wearing more than a leather speedo in this one.
Oh well, who am I to judge? I’ve never been speedo ready in my life.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Check out “The Omens of a Crow”
Hey 3.5 readers. BQB here.
Dakota Kemp, a friend to this fine blog, has released his new book, “The Omens of a Crow” on Amazon. I’m not sure what it is about but there is an ominous looking dude in a cloak on the cover and the description says he is about to bring something scary to a village.
What could he possibly be bringing? Is it a weapon of some sort? Dark magic? A terrible disease? Wait, I know. He’s bringing chips with no dip. That’s it, isn’t it? Have you ever been to a party and a guy brings chips but he doesn’t bring any dip and everyone is like, “WTF, guy in a cloak, why did you do that for? You expect us to eat this chips dry? You couldn’t have sprung for the dip? You might as well have not brought the chips.”
That’s my guess. I suppose you’ll have to check the book out to find out what it actually is.
Let me know if it is chips without dip.
Bookshelf Battle 