I’m so glad Will Arnett and Steve Carrell aren’t popular anymore. I’m watching this commentary for TMNT (2014), which I’ve never seen, and suddenly Will Arnett appears. They couldn’t just get Christian Slater? What is with the super generic orchestral military music opening? When people think of Ninja Turtles, they think of huge pieces of pizza oozing cheese, yellow jumpsuits, and wailing synth guitars. Not this fuckin’ Harry Gregson-Williams shit!
This is so fucking boring! We already had the kid from Surf Ninjas as a pizza guy fighting some masked criminals and then the ninja turtles logo pops up and then oozes off of the screen and the turtles jump into frame at this point in og TMNT2.
i don’t remember the exact specifics/names, but this reminded me that i met the pizza delivery guy, “Keno,” from TMNT2 when i was a little kid. my mom was a teacher, and i think one of the gym teachers she worked with was also a Karate teacher, and taught the guy who played Keno. it’s funny, looking back on this, and really thinking about the fact that the TMNT films really were indie movies in every sense.
The second one is fun shlock but I still stand by the opinion that the first is a legitimately good movie and one of the very best kids’ action flicks ever. Super fun and watchable as a grown ass adult.
the dude in the donatello suit owned the tae kwon do place down the street (1 of like, what felt like 50 in my immediate neighborhood) and was super nice and would do free introductory lessons if you bothered him enough. i dont know this from experience as a adolescent begging donatello for training at all. his dad played akuma in the street fighter movie the game game but i didnt know that when i begged donatello, i mean, when people would beg donatello for lessons
i agree with this take! the first movie is basically just the first arc of the comics (with a little borrowed from some of the other volumes) and it’s pretty solid for what it is.
skipping through romcoms on youtube and somehow found myself watching “a mother’s love”, a translated chinese christian movie. it starts out pretty hallmark-ish but with better aphoristic dialogue (“this society is so corrupt” “the scholar exists at the top section of society” “those who work with their minds are fated to govern, those who work with their hands are fated to be governed”) about a mom pushing her daughter to study harder. but then there’s a doctor who gives long spiels about the impossibility of humans controlling their own destiny, and when i skip forward 20 minutes the framing narrative has been totally discarded for a long powerpoint type segment where various bits of stock footage and cosmic graphics move around while a voice intones things like “science offers brief gratification of the flesh, but cannot assist with the terror and helplessness residing in the soul.” (did terence malick rip off this aesthetic for tree of life or was it vice versa?) most of the remainder of the movie is people reading from a book called “the word appears in the flesh” to enthusiastic support actors who respond to each cryptic sentence by nodding and saying “yes”. then there’s a song. the film is very glossily produced and i looked it up to see who made it. it turns out that “the church of almighty god” (aka “eastern lightning”, which sounds like a racist enemy in a punch-out game) is some kind of mysterious schism group who believe the second coming of jesus has already happened and that she’s a chinese woman living in america. the movie makes no mention of this that i could see, talk about burying the lede!! i watched a documentary on the same channel which was all about america as god’s kingdom helping to overthrow the sterile atheism of mao, darwin, and for some reason isaac newton, all with glorious stock footage of american attack helicopters sweeping over the sea. i check out their website and among the videos is another strangely well-produced 20 minute “skit” about how to tell the true christ from the false (it turns out that it’s all explained in a book called, yes, “the word appears in the flesh”).
anyway none of this is very interesting, i just wanted to salute the fact that it only took two related videos to get me from off-brand hallmark movies to ones produced by some kind of millenarian doomsday group, and to say how much i appreciate the bizarre and unexplained fragment of english text they use for the scene about high-school language coaching
lair of the white worm was fun and notable in that it includes three of the main psychosexual fantasies of 1980s britain in one film:
incredibly pallid guys with names like ian or ned getting seduced by horny posh women and responding by saying things like “sorry, you what?” and “i’m going to be late for tea”
stewardess hands you crossword puzzle on the concorde
sucking a policeman’s ankle
i also like the part where they find a picture of a hermaphroditic snake person and immediately conclude that it’s “capable of the ultimate in self-fulfilment”. the famous snake that sucks its own dick, aka ouroboros… a vision of eternity…
i watched one cut of the dead! its 10x more clever than i originally thought and super feel good in a way i actually like
i watched to live and die in la! it was like catching an epsiode of a tv show i know nothing about! too many problems solved with cop gunfights, not for me
i watched punishment park! endlessly frustrating because its 50 years old and everyone argues the same points while everyone dies. it feels good to be right though. it feels like Salo America
I like boring Ken Russell films I suppose. Lisztomania has the pace of a race horse with dementia and it’s unrepentantly goofy and Ringo is the pope and I dig it. Agree Lair of the White Worm is up there, The Devils is my fav though. The only Russell film I’ve seen that leaves me kinda cold is Tommy and I like The Who.
i am the type of person that when someone asks me what my favorite anime is i sincerely say belladonna of sadness so i have no qualms recommending this movie
the kangaroo court scenes are ‘just twitter’ that’ll get any normal person interested and warned
my ex liked to jerk off to parts of lair of the white worm which really fucking tainted any enjoyment i could have gotten from it but i usually just tell people his movies are too british and leave it at that
Yeah the ingredients are all there for something truly great but it’s not, it’s a mess. Still, I think I’m a sucker for those particular ingredients even before they’re properly prepared and put in the oven to bake.
