Harry: Week 38 June 19, 2009
Posted by madkevin in Harry.3 comments
Some pics for those of you who are not privvy to the Flickrstream. First up, an extremely rare picture of Harry in repose:
Awwww. Looking at him like this, you’d have no idea he was capable of great, great evil.
Next: Wet dog!
Harry being wet poses a bit of a conundrum for him, because while he hates being wet, he also hates being towelled. So usually he just looks all sad and dejected for a while, until he gets irritated enough with being moist that he deigns to allow us to dry His Royal Dampness.
Seriously, look at that face. He looks like we force-feed him a diet of gruel before sending him to his twenty-hour shift at the salt mines. Which is ludricous, because by law the shift can only be, like, sixteen hours.
Last: Planting a flag on Mount Kevin:
I’ve mentioned his bizarre fetish about being on my head, right? Well, here’s proof. If you think this is weird, about thirty seconds after this was taken he proceeded to French-tongue my ear canal. That’s wrong on at least five different levels.
Quick! Somebody Lend Me 36,001 Pounds! June 15, 2009
Posted by madkevin in Nostalgia, angry old dudes, narcissism.3 comments
The painfully awesome scooter ridden by Phil Daniels in the surprisingly excellent future Dude Movie pick Quadrophenia just got sold for thirty-six thousand pounds. You know, this one:
Ah well. I’m sure the guy who bought it is nice eno…. WHO THE FUCK AM I KIDDING? I TOTALLY WANT THIS! GRRRRRRRRR!!!
Dude Movies: Outlander May 24, 2009
Posted by madkevin in Dude Movies, ODIN!!!!!!, Uncategorized.3 comments
Outlander
What’s it about?
Monster hunter from space crash-lands next to a Viking village in 700AD, accidentally releasing said monster to munch on the unsuspecting sons of Odin.
Any chicks in the movie?
Sophia Myles (dependable as always as the semi-hot British chick in a genre movie) as Viking king John Hurt’s spunky daughter. You can tell she’s spunky because she has red hair. It’s a total giveaway. Alas, no nudity, because when you’re fighting a hellbeast from Arcturus, who has time for nooky?
Awesomeness Factor?
There are two types of people in this world. The majority of people, who belong in the first group, wouldn’t give a movie about Vikings fighting aliens a second glance on their way to rent whatever insipid romantic comedy starring a non-naked Jennifer Aniston got released this week. You know – normal fucking people. The second group, whom we refer to as Dudes*, would stop dead at the sight of this DVD cover while their brain desperately tried to make sense of a universe that only chose now, some hundred years after the invention of cinema, to make a ALIEN VERSUS VIKING PICTURE. With such a solid gold concept, Outlander would have to be an epic failure of Uwe Boll proportions for me to dislike it. But luckily, Odin smiled upon Outlander and gave it his bloody blessing: sure, you won’t convince your wife or asshole art-snob friends to watch this anytime soon, but this is actually a hell of a lot better than it has any right to be. Sure, the Vikings have about as much historical authenticty as a fat-ass drunken LARPer has to Orlando Bloom, but nobody gives a shit about actual Vikings. I want to see the Vikings of my mind who, not coincidentally, look exactly like bald, bearded, face-tattoed Ron Perleman, swinging war hammers the size of small dogs and screaming things like “I WILL TEAR YOUR BLEEDING HEART FROM YOUR BODY!!!” Still, when you have an alien vs. Vikings movie, the Vikings are only half the equation. But again, Outlander comes through with a fabulous monster, which appears to be what would happen if a chimera hatefucked a Balrog. They even manage to (SPOILER!) set the thing on fire, which is like fifteen kinds of awesome right fucking there. Amazingly, the sci-fi elements of the story are equally strong, looking like what I assume the guys who made The Chronicles Of Riddick were aiming for but didn’t quite reach. Outlander isn’t a smart movie, exactly – but it is as smart as it needs to be. Which, when it comes to all things Dude Movie, is just enough.
Mitigated by?
I eagerly await the inevitable fan-edit that tosses the Howard Shore knock-off score for bitchin’ battle metal.
* Something I’ve been meaning to explain about Dude Movies – the term “dudes” neither respects or implies gender. To be a Dude, and by extension a lover of movies aimed at Dudes, you don’t actually have to be swinging pipe. Rather, Dudeness is a state of mind, one that is encapsulated almost entirely by the abstract concept of a movie like Outlander. Here lies the essence of Dudeosity: you looked at that poster, and the very first thing you asked yourself was “How is Vin Diesel not in this movie?”
Voxy Lady May 17, 2009
Posted by madkevin in Strummy, narcissism, wankery.add a comment
So a little while back, I decided to blow money for no good reason on a little practice amp. My reasoning behind this was that if I ever wanted to, I don’t know, play guitar somewhere besides in front of my computer, a practice amp would be a nice thing to have. Little did I know that practice amps have come a long fucking way – I picked up an amazing little 15w Vox that has an absurd amount of settings. I loooooove Vox, even though Brian May through plays one and, as we all know, Queen is responsible for cancer.
Anyway, turns out this little thing can crank out a great, fuzzy rock tone. To inaugurate Voxy into the family, I decided to put all that stoner rock and metal I’ve been listening recently to good use. This one is loud and, unbelievably, sloppier than usual, but it was a fucking riot to play. The guitars in the extreme left and right are through the Vox with no other manipulation (besides compression on the mastering channel) – there’s a bit at the two-thirds mark where they have a nice, warm, tubey “American Woman” sound. The middle guitar is going through my usual attention-deficit “Hey, I wonder what this plug-in does?” chain of wonky effects. Anyway, I dig it.
Click on the link to give it a listen ==> Dude, It’s Like… Dude.
Please to enjoy!
Dude Movies: JCVD May 4, 2009
Posted by madkevin in Dude Movies.3 comments
JCVD
What’s it about?
In a plot seemingly constructed in a Belgian movie laboratory for the sole purpose of getting me to watch it, Jean-Claude Van Damme (playing himself, sort of) finds himself embroiled in a bank-heist hostage situation while depressingly contemplating his failed career.
Any chicks in the movie?
Nobody of consequence.
Awesomeness Factor?
You know those dancing bears in the circus? They ride around on unicycles, dressed in hilariously emasculating clown costumes, and you feel kinda sorry for the bear but at the same time you’re all like “Dude! That bear is totally riding a unicycle! How awesome is that?” It’s not the quality of the riding that’s important, but rather that the bear can ride at all. In JCVD, the bear is Jean-Claude Van Damme*, and the unicycle is his freshly discovered ability to act, made even more shocking because he’s starred in approximately one squintillion direct-to-DVD movies before this. The conceit here is Jean-Claude is playing himself, or at least some particularly depressing version of himself – a once-celebrated action star who’s ego and drug problems have dragged him down to the sub-Steven Seagal level of the action movie ladder. JCVD kicks off with a brazenly awesome one-take action sequence where the Muscles From Brussels takes down what appears to be the entire German eastern front, but you can’t stop yourself from noticing his slow, methodical movements and his sloppy, over-reacting opponents. Jean-Claude is no Tony Jaa, and the action movie world has moved on without him. From there, Van Damme gives us an incredibly self-loathing peek into his life: he’s broke, he’s old, he’s fighting for custody of his daughter, and while he’s still a national icon in Belgium he’s nothing more than an 80s punchline to the rest of the world. JCVD tricks you in those first ten minutes or so into thinking it’s going to be the Charlie Kaufman version of an action movie, but sadly once the actual plot starts it slides into a sub-par hostage thriller played mostly straight. Annoyingly, the director really, really, really wants to make Pulp Fiction*, so he cuts up the narrative of this story into a pointlessly tricky flashback-and-forward structure in the mistaken belief that a non-sequential structure must somehow equal art. (There’s a nice bit of side business with one of the bank robbers who just happens to be a massive Van Damme fan as he talks Jean-Claude’s ear off about how John Woo screwed his career after Hard Target.) But wait, that bear’s got one more trick up it’s clown sleeve, which comes in the form of a show-stopping monologue delivered straight to the camera near the end, where Van Damme essentially apologises to his fans for being such a fuckup. It stops the movie dead of course because there’s no way it can recover, but to call it surprising doesn’t even begin to address how utterly fuck-boggled I was watching it. It’s like the bear stopped riding the unicycle and instead performed a soliloquy from Richard III and then lit himself on fire.
Mitigated By?
I wish I could recommend this to normal people, but the truth is there’s about fifteen minutes of awesome wrapped around a mediocre flick. On the other hand, if you’ve seen Bloodsport more than once all the way through on purpose, then this is an absolutely essential rental. Dude really hates John Woo, though.
* Surprise!
** To the point where he rips off Pulp Fiction’s title font for the end credits. Those cheeky Belgians.
Harry: Week 28 May 1, 2009
Posted by madkevin in Harry.3 comments
We’ve had Harry for just over a six months now, and it’s been a draining if often hilarious experience. For the first couple of months, he was basically a little ball of fur, teeth and anger. I’m convinced that he didn’t realize our feet were attached to the rest of our body and not just four other, smaller, faceless dogs. He wouldn’t sit still for more than a nanosecond at a time, except to take a dump inside the apartment. So, you know, fun.
The things with dogs is that they can be surprisingly focussed. Not all the time – Harry still has fits of complete spazmosity where he bounces and vibrates around the room like Robert Downey Jr. after a eightball bender at the Viper Room in 1991. But he can also follow us around like the world’s cutest little stalker, panting disturbingly as he makes what we like to call Crazy Face at us. You can see a bit of Crazy Face here, although the picture doesn’t quite do it justice. Imagine that he’s making this face while slackjawed, panting and drooling 
just a little bit, like a Solid Gold dancer after a vigourous interpretive dance set to Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Escape Of The Heart”. All that’s missing is the gold lamé jumpsuit and the laser beams.
He also likes to – and I really don’t know how else to say this – freak on my head. This is hard to explain, and even harder to experience, but he’s been doing it since he was a pup. Basically, he tries to scale Mount Kevin, then tries to position himself on top of my head while he either licks the inside of my ear, eats my hair, or both. This often involves a lot of vibrating on his part, as if the sheer joy at assaulting my skull is simply too much to bear. Luckily, he hasn’t tried to make sweet puppy love to either my ear or hair… yet.
So the first two pictures were taken during that magic, golden period of about five minutes where he’s happy to sit on my lap or chest before making mounting another attack at my head. I like the longer shot, because he looks extra crazy.
The last picture here was a pointless attempt to take a picture of him from my vantage point right before he got all freaky. I like it because it looks like he’s starring in an Ingmar Bergman movie.
Dude Movies: Phantom Of The Paradise April 26, 2009
Posted by madkevin in Dude Movies, Uncategorized.2 comments
What’s it about?
De Palma’s glam-rock rewrite of Phantom Of The Opera, with bug-eyed De Palma stalwart William Finley as the titular Phantom and malignant dwarf Paul Williams as rock record mogul and Paradise club owner Swan.
Any chicks in the movie?
Cutie-patootie Jessica Harper, who in the 70s never met a cult movie role she didn’t like. Here she’s an aspiring singer-songwriter in the Carly Simon mode named Phoenix who wins the coveted role in the Paradise’s production of Faust by exhibiting all the dancing skills and pure rawk charisma of a freshly beheaded chicken.*
Awesomeness Factor?
Harper’s limb-flapping aside, Phantom Of The Paradise is one hell of a movie. De Palma freestyles his way through a mash-up of Phantom Of The Opera, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Faust and a little dash of The Portrait Of Dorian Grey for good measure while his director’s id conjures up references** to Hitchcock, German expressionism, glam rock, Orson Welles, Grand Guignol, doo wop, and anything else he can think of to throw at the screen. (My favourite part is when the script calls for a bomb to be planted in a prop car on-stage in an attempt to assassinate Swan’s nostalgia act The Juicy Fruits, De Palma decides to shoot it as a direct homage*** to the opening tracking shot of Touch Of Evil, except split screen.) Musically, the score is no great shakes, although it’s better when it’s hilariously pastiching the nostalgia craze of the 70s or bad Beach Boys surf than it is with the glam and rock stuff. But what really cranks Phantom from a mere De Palma curio to balls-out awesomeness is the wildly entertaining casting. Paul Williams sinks his tiny, childlike teeth into the role of a lifetime as Swan, although it should be noted for the faint of heart that you get to see Williams work his semi-nude mojo on Jessica Harper, which is a little bit like watching shaved Ewok porn.**** And cult stalwart Gerrit Graham damn near steals the movie as the flamboyantly homosexual glam-rock sensation Beef, who Graham plays so hilairously broadly I kept expecting Paul Lynde to wander on-screen to ask him to “Tone it down, sunshine.”
Mitigated By?
If there’s one thing that abominable Repo: The Genetic Opera has shown us is that they literally don’t make movies like Phantom anymore. The other thing it teaches us is that most people shouldn’t try.
* I was hoping to find a YouTube cut of Phoenix’s audition, but all I could find was the trailer. You can catch a glimpse of Harper’s – well, I guess we’ll have to call it “dancing” in that she is flailing her limbs whilst music plays – at about the 45 second mark:
** OK, rip-offs.
*** Ibid.
**** OK, it’s a LOT like watching shaved Ewok porn.
The Video Game Nostalgia Project Continues April 21, 2009
Posted by peet in Uncategorized.add a comment
I apologize for the lengthy delay after only 1 week of this. I put the project on hiatus while I built this:
That’s an outdated picture of it, the paint job looks slightly less terrible now.
Expect a 1984/1985 combined summary later this week. In the meantime, play Robot Dinosaurs that Shoot Beams When They Roar. It may just be the greatest game of all time.
Dude Movies: Highlander April 15, 2009
Posted by madkevin in Dude Movies, chop socky.add a comment
Highlander
What’s it about?
The charisma-free Christopher Lambert, here playing the World’s Gayest Scotsman, is shocked to discover he’s an immortal being destined to fight other immortals in something called “The Game”. See, The Game happens during the end of time called The Gathering, during which the immortals left on earth will try to behead each other because they are compelled to by The Quickening*, and the last one left standing – you know, with the head still on – will get The Prize. Still doesn’t explain his accent, though.
Any chicks in the movie?
One of the perks of being an immortal is you get lots of time to work on your mojo, so Mr. Mopey Live-Forever Stupid Face get to sheath the ol’ claymore in a couple of comely lasses throughout the ages. His Middle Ages chick keeps the sheepskins on, but the modern-era forensic scientist with the inexpicably deep knowledge of ancient swords - if you know what I mean** - indulges in some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nudity during the shockingly boring sex scene.
Awesomeness Factor?
Two beheadings out of five. I know Highlander has some weird cult following, but all I really remembered from the movie when I saw it back in the theatre originally was that Lambert, a Frenchman, plays a Scottish highlander while Sean Connery, an actual Scotsman, plays an Egyptian dressed for some reason like a Spaniard. Oh, and there’s some Queen songs. Seeing as the most basic and most sacred rule of Dude Movies is “Never watch anything with Christopher Lambert or Queen in it”, Highlander would seem by definition be the worst movie ever made because it has both, and sometimes at the same time. And yet, this movie has garnered a pretty big cult following, and quite frankly the first ten minutes or so*** had me convinced I misremebered Highlander as being worse than it actually was. But then, right at the ten minute and one second mark, those stupid but admittedly entertaining manic pop thrills pretty much get shot to hell. The weird non-chronological narrative mish-mash of barbarian fantasy and MTV-style action produces a tone as incoherent as the plot – so, why exactly are these guys fighting again? Director Russell Mulchahy’s idiot-savant ability to frame any given shot or transition well lives only to be sabotaged by his ham-fisted failure to string them together in any meaningful or entertaining way. And then there’s Christopher Lambert. Lambert is literally the worst screen actor in history who isn’t either a) an animal, b) retarded or c) a retarded animal. Seriously. What should be moments of pure badassery are transmuted by the Shitty Acting Transitive Property into 100% cheeseball gaywaditude, as Lambert lisps ”Zere can bee own-lee whon” before shooting a quick pout at the camera. Dude, you’re not a Highlander. You’re Derek Zoolander.
Mitigated By?
If you have to watch Highlander because, I don’t know, you lost a bet or something, watch it for Clancy Brown, the leather-clad bad guy called The Krugan who’s supposed to be the most dangerous swordsman in history and yet somehow fails to kill Lambert like twelve times. Especially weird considering he kills Connery by basically knocking a fucking castle down on him.
* Duh.
** I mean swords.
*** Which go like this: Queen song. Titles.80s style wrestling match. Lambert is chased from the stadium, into the parking garage. SWORDFIGHT! Overhead fluroscent lights flicker like strobes because it’s 1986! HOLY SHIT LAMBERT JUST CUT THAT DUDE’S HEAD OFF! AND NOW ALL THE CARS WINDOWS ARE EXPLODING FOR NO REASON!!! Hey, my beer’s cashed.
