POTPOURRI

TV: Celebrity Poker Showdown is back on Bravo, and host Dave Foley is as drunk as ever! And that to me is funny. During his first season with the show, he was so drunk he routinely slurred words, and often had trouble focusing on the camera. I guess the producers had a word with him, because all through the next series of games, he seemed to have sobered up. But with the new season, which started this week, the cork is out of the bottle! He's back, baby!

As for the poker -- oh, man. I've watched a lot of cards on TV over the past couple years, and I have never seen the best player at the table beaten time and time and time again by sheerest, stupidest luck as Sara Rue was this game. And did Sara not look cute as all git-out? (And by "cute," I mean "smokin' hot.") Boy, she's lost some weight since she played last season. Not that she wasn't hot before; I'm just making an observation.


Yeah, she's just adorable. But adorable don't cut it, because Brad Garrett was pulling cards out of his ass. Sara's got two pair? Brad fills the straight on the river. Sara's got a straight? The board gets the same straight, meaning she and Brad split the pot. She should've knocked him out of the game about 87 times, and he just kept winning. It was brutal. And great TV. Good start to the new tournament.

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MOVIES: In all my Oscar foofaraw, I neglected to mention the Razzies, which also announced its nominees on Tuesday. This may be the first year I haven't seen any of the films nominated for Worst Picture. I tried -- I saw Butterfly Effect, after all. And The Grudge! If those movies aren't bad enough to make the list, then I ain't never seein' Catwoman!

Wow, they hate Ben Stiller. He got nominated as Worst Actor for a record five films: Along Came Polly, Anchorman, Dodgeball, Envy, and Starsky & Hutch. (I think when they nominate someone, they just name every film he's been in that year.) Now, come on! He was kind of good in at least two of those films. I mean, I've grown sick of Stiller's frequently repeated nebbish-who-gets-caught-in-humiliating-situations roles, too, but at least he was doing something different in Dodgeball and his cameo in Anchorman. I thought he was great in both of those.

And the Razzies went after Dubya, too! Multiple nominations for his appearance in Fahrenheit 9/11. My favorite: Worst Screen Couple, for "George W. Bush & EITHER Condoleeza* Rice OR His Pet Goat." I never thought I'd say this, but: he's got my vote!

*It's actually spelled with two z's guys, but that's okay; it's a tough name, and it's not like she's been in any news stories recently that would allow you to check the spelling.

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The second I talked up I Read the Comics So You Don't Have To, Josh goes and changes the name to The Comics Curmudgeon. Man! Now I have to change my sidebar links again!

While I'm being all self-referential, I'd like to thank Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings and Augie De Blieck of Various and Sundry for throwing links my way. Now, Augie is a fairly conservative fella, with, presumably, a majority of fairly conservative readers, where I, on the other hand, hate America. Oops! I meant, "am liberal." Oh, what a giveaway! My point is -- and I'm not saying the one thing has anything whatsoever to do with the other -- the thing is, the total elapsed time between Augie's link, and the first ever really bitchy political comment left on my blog, was two hours and fifty-three minutes. That's a funny little coinky-dink, innit?

MOVIES: Top Ten

I lied again. Today's top ten list is movies, not comics.

Wow, I saw a lot more movies this year than I thought I had. According to this list, these are all the films I saw in 2004 whose first theatrical release in America was during this calendar year. The ones I saw first on DVD or TV are marked with an asterisk. (Links go to my original review of the film, where applicable.)

We'll start with my ten best first:

1. Fahrenheit 9/11
   The most powerful, infuriating, chilling, and yes, important film of the year. I wish more of the people filling the seats for Passion of the Christ had seen this film instead, and had opened their hearts and their eyes to the real pain, the real horror, the real suffering happening to real people, right now.



2. Hero
   Epic in scale and emotion, this martial arts masterpiece was ceaselessly thrilling to behold. I look forward to seeing the current release House of Flying Daggers by the same director, which is, by all accounts, even better.



3. The Incredibles
   I can't believe an animated film better than Shrek 2 came along this year. That's a good year for animation. This is simply a great movie, not just a great cartoon.



4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
   Ceaselessly amazing in its visual inventiveness and its unflinching look at the power -- and the pain -- of love. Anyone who still denies Jim Carrey's acting prowess after seeing this film deserves a poke in the eye.



5. Spider-Man 2
   Is it the best superhero movie ever made, as Roger Ebert claims? Could be, could be. Only the original two Supermans even come close. It was certainly a giant leap forward for the genre, investing as much attention in its characters as in its spectacular action sequences.



6. Kill Bill Vol. 2
   The ultra-violence took a back seat to character development this time around, but that just meant more opportunities for the trademark Tarantino dialogue to flow. Super-cool, as are all things QT, but with an emotional resonance he's never before achieved.



7. Shaun of the Dead
   A great comedy and a great horror film, with surprisingly touching dramatic moments interspersed throughout the laughter and gore.



8. The Dreamers*
   I've tried before to write my review of Bernardo Bertolucci's wonderful film, but words failed me. It's a chronicle of cultural revolution, cinematic revolution, and sexual revolution. It's beautiful, it's ethereal, it's provocative, it's compelling, it's smart and seductive and it's the most erotic thing to hit the screens this year -- every word of which applies as equally to the film as it does to its breathtaking leading lady, Eva Green, making her transcendent film debut. She's as luminous and electric as Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, as Grace Kelly in Rear Window, as Kim Novak in Vertigo. But with copious amounts of nudity.



9. Shrek 2
   Funny, touching, exciting, beautiful, even better than the original, with a great vocal performance by Jennifer Saunders as the Fairy Godmother nearly stealing the movie from that big green ogre.



10. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
    The funniest movie of the year. Will Ferrell is unquestionably the new king of comedy.

TIED FOR ELEVENTH PLACE

Dawn Of The Dead
Best straight-up horror movie of the year, with incredible special effects and action, and an ending true to the zombie genre.

Garden State
The first half deserves to make the top ten; the second half kept it out. Still a tremendous debut film from Zach Braff.

Spartan*
A truly smart and suspenseful thriller, from writer-director David Mamet, with Val Kilmer showing he still knows how to act.

Team America: World Police
Another contender for funniest movie of the year, just edged out by Anchorman.

The Terminal
Spielberg and Hanks, together again. Funny and sweet, but with a miscalculated romantic plot with Catherine Zeta-Jones gumming up the works.

ALSO WORTHY

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Mean Girls*
The Punisher*

PROBABLY COULD'VE WAITED FOR THE DVD

Broken Lizard's Club Dread
The Bourne Supremacy
Hellboy
Starsky & Hutch

WISELY DID WAIT FOR THE DVD

50 First Dates*
Eurotrip*
Home On The Range*
The Lion King 1 1/2*
Man on Fire*
Napoleon Dynamite*
Taking Lives*

THE WORST PIECE OF CRAP OF THE YEAR (TIE)

The Butterfly Effect*
The Grudge

MOVIES: The Butterfly Effect

I just finished watching the DVD of The Butterfly Effect and... wow. That was interesting. I mean, don't get me wrong: it's a train wreck. It is definitely a failure. But it fails in such uniquely spectacular and fascinating ways, that I can't help but admire it a little.

First things first: I'll admit, Ashton Kutcher isn't as bad as I thought he'd be. I actually like Kutcher on That '70s Show. I've never been an Ashton basher. (Except for that Punk'd crap he does on MTV. That is some seriously lame shit.) I think he can be very funny. I just didn't think he'd be able to pull off a dramatic role. And... he doesn't, exactly, but like I said, he's not as bad as I thought.

Where the film goes wrong, and keeps going wrong, over and over again, is in the relentlessly brutal torture of its characters. The plot, as you know, is a remake of the "Stupid bug! You go squish now!" episode of The Simpsons... well, not really, but it might as well be. Kutcher, like Homer, finds a way to travel into the past, but every change he makes in the hopes of making the future better actually makes it exponentially worse. Ned Flanders never places the Earth under his totalitarian rule, but if the movie had been ten minutes longer, he might very well have.

Here are the horrible things that happen to Kutcher's character Evan before he even goes back in time. (Spoilers, natch.) Evan suffers from a series of blackouts. His father has been locked away in a loony bin. The girl he loves (Kayley) is forced to perform sexual acts with him on camera by Kayley's alcoholic father -- when they're only seven years old. (Eric Stoltz gives an amazingly creepy performance as the father, by the way.) The girl's brother Tommy watches them, and it turns him into a psychopath. Evan finally gets to meet his dad -- who then tries to murder him. Evan, Kayley, Tommy, and Evan's best friend Lenny accidentally blow up a woman and her baby girl. Yes, I said blow up. Tommy puts Evan's dog in a sack and sets it on fire. Lenny is driven into near-catatonia by these events. Evan's mother moves them out of town, leaving Kayley to fend for herself against her lunatic father and brother. And, to top it all off, when Evan seeks out Kayley again after a seven-year absence, he drives her to commit suicide.

Yeah, and that's just an appetizer. Perhaps you begin to see how comically over the top this film is determined to go.

Evan discovers that by reading the journals he kept growing up, he can project himself back in time -- it turns out the blackouts were during periods of time travel. If he concentrates on a journal entry concerning one of those blackouts, he goes back into his body at that time, and is then able to influence the events that happened during his blackouts. (Many more spoilers ahead.) First time he tries to do so, it seems everything is just peachy dandy. He's turned into a frat boy douchebag for some reason, but he and Kayley are happily in love. Then Tommy shows up and tries to kill Evan, but Evan kills him instead. Cut to: the slammer! Evan's doing hard time for murder. And for murder, you don't go to white collar resort prison. You go to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. Yes, that's right, on his first night in the joint, Evan gets introduced to the wonders of prison rape. Ouchie.

Well, Evan thinks he can fix everything, and he really really means it, this time for sure. He goes back in time again, and tries to keep Tommy from killing his dog, but through a whimsical miscommunication, he accidentally convinces Lenny to murder Tommy. Oopsie! Back in the future, Lenny is strapped to a bed in the loony bin, and Kayley is a scar-faced junkie whore. Let's try that again: Evan goes back in time to keep the woman and her baby daughter from getting blown up, and he's successful! Back in the future, everyone is happy and healthy -- even Tommy has turned to the Lord and changed his evil ways. Small hitch: the explosion blew off Evan's arms. Dagnabbit! Pesky time travel! Evan sees how much better off everyone else is, though, and decides to take one for the team and stay with this timeline. Then he finds out his mother is dying of cancer. To the Wayback Machine! This time Evan figures he'll get rid of the explosive before it can ever be used. Funny thing, though, little monkey wrench in the plan: he accidentally blows up Kayley instead. Butterfingers!

This time, back in the future, Evan's in the loony bin himself. He's got one chance left to put everything back in order, and he does so by going back to when he and Kayley first met, and telling her he will kill her if she ever speaks to him again. Nice and subtle, there, chief. But it works! Evan returns to the future, and by never having known him, Kayley and Tommy turn out just fine. It's a wonderful life!

The DVD has an extra little kick in the ass that I love. It ratchets up this unrelenting torture-fest into whole new levels of agony. There's the theatrical ending -- in which, eight years further down the line, Evan and Kayley pass each other on the street, but keep on going. There are two alternate takes of that scene -- one in which Evan turns to follow Kayley, and one in which Kayley and Evan stop and have a sweet little meeting. But then there's the director's cut. Oh ho ho, the director's cut goes an entirely different and jaw-droppingly sadistic route. On Evan's last trip to the past, instead of going back to his first meeting with Kayley, he goes all the way back to his birth. At the hospital, while still in his mother's womb, he gains his entire lifetime of knowledge. And he decides his best option is to (I have to italicize and boldface this) strangle himself to death with his own umbilical cord. I swear on my life that I am not making this up. The best option for everyone else in his life to have a happy ending is for him to commit prenatal suicide. Gee, I wonder why the preview audiences didn't embrace that ending?

It's an awful movie, but it's so original in its awfulness. Each new horrible wrinkle in time leaves you agog in disbelief. "He's got no frickin' arms?? Oh, come on!!" It actually began reminding me of Showgirls a little bit as it went on, just a total misfire of epic proportions. The very bad things stop coming across as very bad, but rather very funny. It's just ludicrous after a while. You just have to start laughing. And the movie (like Showgirls) is so committed to its badness. The fact that nobody who made this movie is aware of its badness makes it all the funnier. But the thing is, you can't look away! You just have to watch in gleeful awe at its audacious awfulness.

Would I recommend it? It depends on how much you like bad movies. If you made it through the entirety of both House of the Dead and House of 1000 Corpses, or, for that matter, all of Showgirls, then you might get some weird form of entertainment out of this film, like I did. If you want a good time travel movie, you're better off with Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure than this thing. And if you want a good Ashton Kutcher movie... well, good luck.