Twenty-Eight Minutes and Fifty-Five Seconds

 by Nick Orsini

Flash back to: Super Bowl Sunday. 1PM. I am not buying chips or dip for the party I'm hosting in just a few hours. I am not ordering pizzas, picking up cases of Keystone Light, or grabbing some bags of plastic silverware. I am at Shotsie's Tattoo in North Jersey letting a grizzly man draw a permanent image on my body. The image? You've seen it before. It's the patch on the jackets of all the main characters in John Carpenter's The Thing. The mark of everyone working at Outpost 31. Science fiction saved my life. My parents gave me VHS copies of Star Wars when I still had a peach-fuzz poopy mustache. I made my final college thesis presentation on Blade Runner and birth of the sci-fi-as-western genre. I am probably not the final authority on sci-fi. These days, with the internet opening the window and allowing the nerd breeze to blow back the curtains of all that is justifiable and cool, nothing is sacred. Someone will be more nerdy than me. This isn't me trying to stack my lightsaber wood up against the blogosphere so we can have a nerd pissing contest. This is an article about the twenty-eight minutes and fifty-five seconds I can never get back.

Science fiction has hit an absolute and dismal low. I'm talking about The Darkest Hour. Released on Christmas Day, 2011, the film is currently wearing it's 11% on Rotten Tomatoes like bruises after a beating. Back in December, I went back and forth with my roommate about seeing the film in theaters. It was only playing in 3D, which meant that a ticket and snacks would cost about $30. I watched the trailer like a jackass. There was Emile Hirsch, awesome in Into the Wild. There was Max Minghella, who held his own in Art School Confidential. There was Olivia Thirlby, a sex kitten in The Wackness. I was sold. Then I saw the run time. The film stands under 90 minutes. Take into account opening and end credits, maybe you'd get 75 minutes of actual story. I was on the fence. A cool concept (electric aliens invading and highjacking Moscow) mixed with a decent cast, in the end, couldn't overcome the almighty dollar (and the abysmal reviews that started pouring in). I spent that $30 on some used t-shirts and a trip to the Chinese buffet. 

Months later, film resource JoBlo.com told me that The Darkest Hour was hitting DVD. My Netflix queue was updated and, about two days ago, the film arrived in my mail slot. A used t-shirt will never make you feel helpless or worthless. A trip to the Chinese buffet won't make you feel like you wasted a gigantic portion of your day, week, month, or year. Funny... The Darkest Hour was so offensively bad that not only did I feel worthless and defeated; I also found myself wondering what types of things I could fit into those 30 minutes I wasted on the movie. 30 minutes? The film is 89 minutes long...but I never made it that far.

I won't go in-depth about what's wrong with The Darkest Hour. I won't tell you how the acting is so stilted, it feels like you're watching an exercise in the rebirth of vaudeville. I won't talk about the script, which features such lines as, "No human society ever went without booze or religion, which is why I drink religiously." I won't even talk about the special effects because, well, I turned the movie off after 28:55 (the time stamp is on my DVD player as we speak). I didn't even want to process the film because I didn't care enough. I am not an authority to review this film because, after this article, I will do my best to never think of TDH again. 

When you watch a film, specifically a sci-fi film about aliens, there are certain things you care about. You care about what happens to the main character(s). You care about what happens to the film's setting. Does the city get destroyed? Can earth survive? You care about what the aliens look like. You wait patiently to see the big reveal. You get bits and pieces ...an alien mouth here, a claw there ...but to see all the pieces put together ...that's worth waiting for. I turned The Darkest Hour off early because not only did I care so little about everything a film is supposed to make you care about ...but because I had utterly lost faith, for a moment, in the entire sci-fi genre. I had to stop the hemorrhaging before it was too late. 

I wear my Thing tattoo with pride because I know, for every Darkest Hour and Skyline there will be a District 9 or Children of Men. I know what came before ...when Ripley opened the airlock. When "It's a shame she won't live, but then again who does?" was yelled through the rain. When we were told that no, in fact, those aren't the droids we're looking for. You know what? Screw it ...watch The Darkest Hour for yourself. You have to see the worst to appreciate the best. I couldn't make it past the first half-hour, but maybe you can. Maybe the promise of the "big reveal" is enough ...or maybe you can just Google search "darkest hour alien". 

Nick Orsini is a writer and bearded New Jersey guy. His work can be found here.

@NickOrsini

My Hunger Games Date

I am 25 years old. I went on a date to see The Hunger Games. Actually, I should clarify: I did not go through the process of asking a girl to see this film with me, no sweaty palms or nervous pacing. I was an unwilling fifth wheel on a double date. My four companions? Total strangers. How did this happen? What am I even talking about? Here we go.

Friday night, as most of you already know, was the opening night of The Hunger Games - a film based on a series of novels that I have never read. But I am a person in love with events. I am 500 people deep on line to get a new phone. I wait patiently for Robert Loggia's autograph at horror conventions. I never mind being part of a crowd. Twitter has ruined everything. I had to see this movie everyone else would be talking about. I had to remain relevant.

I did everything right. I went to the hidden multiplex eight towns away. I avoided all the sold out shows and extreme Hunger Games fans. I don't expect a pleasant movie-going experience anymore and haven't for years. When you expect perfect silence and considerate people, you just set yourself up for a gigantic letdown.

That's when it happened. One row behind me, in an otherwise moderately crowded theater, came the double date. To be honest, I didn't see them enter as they came in well after the film had started. Two guys. Two
girls sitting boy-girl, boy-girl. By the film's end, I knew more about Ron and Felicia and Ben and Jasmine than I did about Katniss or Peeta or some drunk guy named Sandwich.

I won't go into detail. I won't tell you about when Ron got a handski over his pants or when Jasmine got in a full-blown fight with Ben over why he went to a house party instead of hanging out with her. I won't talk about how many times cell phones were dropped, soda spilled, bad jokes cracked. That's not really the point of any of it. Like I said, when you set your expectations of what going to the movies is too high, you just end up deflated.

...and THAT'S the point. This all reached a fever pitch during a 7pm screening of Easy A months ago when a disgruntled teenager stood up during the film's climatic speech, bent over, and farted loudly from the third row. Someone 10 rows back shouted "doorknob." We all have stories because going to the movies is no longer for the normal; it's for the depraved.

So how do we begin to cope? Fact is, we don't. We can either stop going all together, which will never happen because we love movies too much. We can shush people endlessly and get pissed off, which won't happen because us movie nerds can not actually fight. We can only passive-aggressively hope we're making an impact. Needless to say, I got nothing out of The Hunger Games ...largely because I got caught up in the dramas of real teenage life.

Nick Orsini is a writer and bearded New Jersey guy. His work can be found here.

@NickOrsini

Why We Loved John Hughes

by Jason Webber, written August 6, 2009

"Is it that bad?"

Her eyes, darkened with "that black shit" suddenly well up with tears. And her face is no longer a mask of defiance, but one of shock and surprise. How the hell did The Sporto nail her home situation so damned perfectly?

"Yeeeeah..."

For me, this scene from "The Breakfast Club," serves as the ultimate example of why we loved John Hughes...and why I'm choking back tears as I write this. John GOT us. He never once forgot what it was like to be a young person and to experience all of the heaven and hell contained within the teen years. When you're 16, you're always like Alison--you never expect anyone to really GET you, much less an adult. And when they do, you never forget them. Just like Simple Minds told us not to. 

John was the high school guidance counselor we always wanted but never got. He never preached to you about "peer pressure," the dangers of drugs or any of that ABC After School Special nonsense. His movies splattered all of that teen angst up on the screen, but also gave us the chance to vicariously live out the adolescence that we all wanted but never had.

Didn't we ALL want to be Ferris Bueller and Sloan? Unfortunately, most of us were probably closer to Cameron (and I wouldn't mind having that Gordie Howe jersey)--insecure, scared to death, and overseen by parents who didn't get us. But John did. 

It's impossible to imagine where we would be today without John Hughes. To be sure, our pop culture would be blander--can you picture never being inspired to call your kid brother "a neo-maxi-zoom dweebie?" or doing the Ferris Bueller dance whenever that Sigue Sigue Sputnik's "Love Missile" song is played in the club on '80s Night?

And really, all of this only came from four films--"Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," "Pretty In Pink" and "Some Kind of Wonderful." Well, OK, I'll count "Weird Science," too. After that, Hughes abandoned his station as the Woody Allen for Young People and went on to making movies about REALLY young people--"Home Alone," "Curly Sue," "Dennis the Menace," etc. And yes, they all sucked.

But for five films, Hughes was our Salinger, creating visions of adolescence that was by turns painful and painfully funny. And now, we thirtysomethings who saw John's movies in the theater, are "all growed up," as my nephew says. Most of us went to college, got boring jobs, got spouses (who may or may not be boring), and likely have kids (who watch boring Hughes-wannabe movies like "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist"). Yet, thanks to John Hughes, we will be forever young and forever harboring our crushes on Claire, Ducky (closet queen!), Ferris, Sloan, Bender, and the rest of the Hughes Gang.

John, thanks for everything. We love you. All of us. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads - we all adore you. We think you're a righteous dude.

Thank you.

Jason Webber is a writer living in Dayton, OH. He is a pop culture freak and is also a Juggalo for life. You can read his work here.

Blue Valentine - The Making of a Stoner Classic

By Nick Orsini

How do you justify the unjustifiable? How do you come to grips with a revelation so big, it could change the scope of very basic experiences? How do you bring your stoned self to watch Blue Valentine, in its entirety, knowing full-well the terms your mind will have to come to?

Somewhere, sandwiched between Robocop and Face/Off, I found myself in an altered state watching the unflinching, unraveling love story that is Blue Valentine. I assume most of you have seen it, but if you haven't, it's the ultimate breakup movie. Ryan Gosling's Dean does a 180 from a confident, eager-to-impress young man to a bitter, angry adult, while Michelle Willams' Cindy finds herself, along with her young daughter, in Dean's crossfire. The family dynamic, as well as Dean and Cindy's relationship deteriorates over time. That's about it. The movie is sad. Real sad.

That is, if you're watching it stone cold sober.

Can Blue Valentine join the pantheon of current stoner films; movies like X-Men: The Last Stand and Disney's Prom? The answer, unequivocally, is yes. Maybe it's Dean's hairline/glasses combination and how, by film's end, he looks like leftovers stuck in the carpet of the seediest Atlantic City casino. Maybe it's the final fight scene between Dean and Dr. Feinberg (Cindy's scummy boss) where Dean counts down the seconds before punching the good doctor in the face. To find humor in Dean crawling around, on his hands and knees, looking for a discarded wedding ring in the woods is oddly sick and twisted, but it has the distinct ability to test a person's limits; you're laughing, but you can't reconcile why.

That's how Blue Valentine snuck up on me. The relationship between Dean and Cindy is so over-the-top fractured and broken that you can't look away from it. You begin to replay every one of your break-ups and measure how they don't hold a candle to the break-up in the movie. The self-destruction is more than any Michael Bay disaster, more than the worst part of the movie of your life. To confront these things head-on can only elicit laughter. How have things regressed so quickly for these people? Who were they to start? Who are they now?

Then there's the courtship between Dean and Cindy, the good times they shared. I'm talking about the flowers that Dean brought with him when Cindy first invited him over to dinner/meet her family. I'm talking about the ukulele song that gruff, sensitive, younger Dean plays as a younger, free Cindy dances awkwardly on the sidewalk. These are things we do all the time in private. These are not public displays of affection, but rather intimate moments reserved for a select group of people. Why are we seeing these things? How weird do they make us feel? For me, it stopped being cute and began to become intrusive. My cloudy brain wanted some type of escape.

A great stoner movie takes you full circle. It's the tears you cry when Nicolas Cage harpoons John Travolta at the end of Face/Off. It's the joy when Danny McBride blows up a treeline in Tropic Thunder. Blue Valentine takes you to a whole new place. It's so personal, yet so over the top. It's a reflection on all of us and none of us at the same time. It's epic and small, with a hairline pushed so far into obscurity, you can't look away for a second.

Nick Orsini is a writer and bearded New Jersey guy. His work can be found here.

@NickOrsini

52 Weeks with MoviePass- No. 3

Last week I used my MoviePass to see two action flicks. I mean, that's why movie theaters were invented, right? We get to see giant robots punch other giant robots in the robot face! Hell, we got two of them last year, the Michael Bay one and the one where Wolverine plays Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em. There's nothing better than a mid winter action flick. Fight scenes, car chases and explosions are all perfect movie theater images. And if I weren't trying to lose weight for my upcoming wedding I would have enjoyed these last two movies with a giant tub of popcorn and gallon of Dr. Pepper, instead I chewed gum. Recently I saw Haywire and Contraband, one of which I enjoyed very much and the other featured Mark Wahlberg. Now, I understand that saying I didn't fully enjoy a movie with Mark Wahlberg while currently in the Boston city limits is blasphemy but hear me out. 

During my short year and a half here in Boston I have learned three things. First, from the mail man to the laundry lady to the guy helping me with groceries- everyone wants to talk about The Patriots (we'll talk about my relationship with sports next week). Second, the letter "R" is to be used at will and taken completely off of the word 'car'. And third: Mark Wahlberg is a god. 

I learned this last year at a screening of The Fighter I went to in Revere, MA. For those of you who don't know Revere I have two words: The. Sisters. Yeah, the sisters from The Fighter. It's one of the areas in Massachusetts that is right outta that movie. People like Jill Quigg live in Revere. During the screening, my second time seeing it, a woman bursted out in a shrill New England accent "Mahhk, I love you Mahhk!" To my surprise no one yelled at the woman to shut up. In fact the opposite. They cheered. And despite a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes the theater for Contraband was packed and they seemed to love it. I was just okay with it, except for Giovanni Ribisi. I love that dude.

Truth is though, I don't hate Mark Wahlberg. He happens to be in several of my top 50 favorite films of all time... but sadly he also makes appearances in my top 10 least favorite films of all time too. The Fighter, Three Kings, The Departed, BOOGIE NIGHTS! I mean, the dude is legit. One the other hand though- Rock Star, The Happening, Max Payne, PLANET OF THE APES!? The dude is terrible. Mark Wahlberg is hot and cold to me. Actually he's kind of luke warm... actually he's Luke Wilson. Put him in the right place and he's a star. Misuse him and he's in one of the most awkward AT&T commercial of all time. When I see him in The Fighter he IS Micky Ward. He's the hero. But when in The Happening, he's just Marky Mark trying to make us forget about the Funky Bunch. But, I guess that's why theaters were invented, right? Escape. For us we're escaping our jobs (a rap career) or our family (the funky bunch) and spending a couple hours with Mark Wahlberg and Giovanni Ribisi is probably just what we need. As Luke Wilson as I am on Marky Mark, I'll stick around. Oh, and say hi to your mother for me.