I’ve got a bit of an obsessive compulsive issue when it comes to DVDs and Blu-rays. I’m one of those suckers who will get caught every so often in a double-dip if I’m not paying attention. If I am being observant, I’m the guy who waits four extra months to get a disc with some special features attached. I really dug Transformers 3 and wanted to watch it again, but I’ll be damned if I was going to buy a disc with no extras on it!

The issue that has my panties all aflame this week is all about special features and the lack thereof. Oh, most discs today come with some special features on them, but the “featurette” has become the bane of my existence. It used to just be what they called small extras on the disc, but now they’ve really emphasized the -ette, meaning mini, small, or useless.

I recently popped in The Thing (2011) for a viewing. I enjoyed the movie, mostly because of the grotesque creature designs and my undying love for Carpenter’s film. So, enjoying the movie, I was pretty excited to revisit and take a look at some of the special features. There were two “featurettes” included, The Thing Evolves and Fire & Ice. 

The latter feature came first for me, because I do what I want, and let me tell you it was an interesting four minutes (and by that I mean it was a short four minutes). The Thing Evolves was actually pretty decent, closer to fourteen or fifteen minutes, but why even have Fire & Ice as a separate feature? When it’s that short, just push them together and make a cool 20 minute little feature.

There is a lot of this going around, you get a disc and read the back of the packaging and think you’re in for a treat because there are like 10 featurettes listed! Cool! Wait, why are they only ninety seconds long? This is bullshit!

If you have ten 90 second little pieces of shit, that’s 900 seconds. Divide by 60, carry the one, type it into a calculator and that equals 15 minutes. Oh, hey, that’s the size of one cool feature – so again, why are we dividing this into a dozen small sections that I have to keep picking up my remote and hitting “Play” to move on to the next one for? Advertising I guess? For show? To make the back of the package look stacked? Fuck. Makes no sense!

At least those discs have some special features, I just have to use this short paragraph to give the middle finger to discs that are “rushed” to press because people “demand” to see the film again sooner rather than later (Fuck you, James Cameron, Avatar sucked). Put some features on the discs. There is a lot of space there. Use it. Releasing a bare bones disc has become common place, and I want to partly blame Netflix and Redbox and similar services, since those rental copies generally don’t include features. So, since the company is already pressing rental discs, why not try to trick a few consumers into buying a shitty release?

On the subject of special features, let me tell you which ones aren’t special at all: U-Control, BD Live, pocket BLU and anything like that. Pocket BLU is neat because you can unlock content, but that content is often stored on the disc anyways, or just some shitty trailers. Those ‘special features’ all assume for some reason I want to play with my iPhone during the movie or get live weather updates while staring at the menu. No thanks. D-BOX motion doesn’t really shake me up either, who has a fucking D-BOX chair in their house?

Trailers for other movies and photo galleries aren’t shit either. What’s so special about that? You already gave me the option to watch trailers when the disc was first inserted, I’m not going to go back and look at them from the special features menu, especially when I have an internet connection and can call up any trailer on demand at any time. Pretty much the same goes for photo galleries – I have the internet for that, plus I have the movie to watch so I probably just saw all those photos, but as moving pictures.

Don’t get me wrong, a photo gallery of behind the scenes stuff might be neat, as long as it’s part of a bigger collection of special features. When it’s listed on the box as a selling point, you know you’re about to get a shitty set of extras.

What is cool? Making-of featurettes, commentary, deleted and extended scenes, stunt featurettes, documentary stuff. All of that is cool. We like those. Especially if they have some meat to them and aren’t some 90 second internet released piece of shit that you sent out to all the websites two months in advance as advertising. We want original content with some thought behind it. Put the special in special features, not the “special.” (Confused? Read this)

In summation, most discs today are coming equipped with ‘full special’ (that is to say, retarded) special features. They’re either short and disjointed or absent all together and let me tell you, when I come across a movie I enjoy and I want to further experience, this lack of depth in the ‘special’ features pushes me past my boiling point.

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Political correctness is the bane of the artistic community, or so it would seem. It appears as though you can’t do anything in this world without upsetting anyone, and once they’re upset you must do backflips to appease them. Well, I’m here to say: fuck the blind.

Just kidding, I’ve got nothing against the blind. But a recent news articledoes have me up in a furor. Aardman Animation, the company behind Wallace and Gromit and the upcoming feature The Pirates! Band of Misfits, are ditching already completed work on a joke about lepers because some people might feel bad. Are you serious?

The ‘claymated’ film features the acting chops of Hugh Grant, David Tennant, Jeremy Piven, and hottie Salma Hayek and is the story of ‘Pirate Captain’ as he attempts to win the coveted “Pirate of the Year” award. The challenge? He must compete with several other, seemingly more impressive pirates with more competent crews.

In the trailer, Pirate Captain boards a boat he intends to pillage, demanding their gold. A man replies “Afraid we don’t have any gold old man, this is a leper boat. See?” Then his arm falls off.

Hold the presses, apparently.

Leprosy is a disease caused by bacteria that has been around since biblical times. Surely you’ve heard of “leper colonies,” places where lepers were sent to live and die out of sight. Leprosy is a disfiguring disease, categorized by skin lesions, which led to the ostracization of sufferers throughout history.

It’s understandable that two leprosy groups, Lepra Health In Action and the International Federation of Anti-Leprosy Associations, would object to a negative portrayal of leprosy. After all, we don’t want people blindly hating those with leprosy or laughing at their expense.

Which might actually be true if this were the 12th century. Leprosy may have been a big problem for some of the past 4,000 years, but today leprosy is almost non-existent in much of the world. It’s present in some quantity in around 120 countries, but basically only a small handful of countries have a ‘problem’ with leprosy, and that problem is rapidly declining thanks to effective treatment.

So on one hand, we have a small percentage of the entire population of the world suffering from leprosy, while on the other hand we have the vast majority of those suffering from leprosy in areas that don’t watch a ton of movies. Who is going to get offended here? Also, is the scene even offensive? All we see is a goddamn clay cartoon man have his arm drop cleanly off. It’s not a disgusting gag or even a mean spirited slight. Further, it’s a period-correct gag! While leprosy isn’t much in the public conscience today, hundreds of years ago lepers were still treated poorly and put on ships and sent off to go deal with it somewhere else.

It’s dumbfounding why a studio, who spent time, money, and effort making this scene, thought it was funny enough to put into the trailer, and is now going to fold in and remove it based on the objections of two tiny groups representing a small amount of people.

That’s all reasonable justification for keeping the scene. Very few people who could even remotely be offended by it are even going to see it, and the pool of people who would find it offensive is very small. But here’s the thing – I don’t even need that justification. It’s a fucking movie. Movies can say and do whatever they want. Movies can offend people. Call me a bastard, but I’d take the hit of losing the leper crowd and keep the joke in the film. Bowing to political correctness is always bullshit, whether you’re talking about going Full Special or including a ten second scene with a minor leprosy punchline.

The groups think that this joke could create more stigma against people who suffer from leprosy. I really don’t think the target audience for this movie, kids, are going to grow up hating lepers. They probably won’t even remember the joke after a few minutes. They’ll probably only think “Haha, his arm fell off!” and move on to the next flashing colors and sounds.

It’s hard to believe in most of the world people are going to have a lowered view of leprosy sufferers because of a kid’s movie. Sure, in places where people already hate lepers (it’s a problem in India), it’s not going to help, but again, I don’t think a 10 second gag in a cartoon is going to dictate how people behave.

Aardman Animation, you’re acting like a bunch of pussies, and I’m past my boiling point on this one. Stick to your cannons. Keep the joke.

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As much fun as it would be to pick on SOPA/PIPA some more and make some jokes about how “SOPA,” when said aloud, is Spanish for soup, this is something entirely different. Oh, it still has to deal with censorship, but this is some self-imposed completely idiotic and maddening censorship.

On air, movies and television have to play by a set of rules. These rules aren’t totally set in stone, but basically there are some words you can say and some you can’t say. Then there are some you can sort of say, but mostly only in the right context. An example? Pretty much any show on at any time could say “bitch” meaning female dog, because that’s just the definition of the word. If you want to call someone a bitch, generally that’s kept to after 8pm.

Cable gets a bigger break than network, as it’s a paid service, but that doesn’t mean they’re immune to fines and more importantly, advertiser backlash, so everyone kind of plays with kid gloves.

Of course, it’s parents who should be responsible for policing the television. If a show wants to say bad words, let them. Put it on after 8pm, put a “Language” notice on it, and parents can set their TVs to block it. Easy cakes. I mean, I still don’t understand why HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax won’t show hardcore porn, because why not, amirite? But I’m getting distracted by the thoughts of boobies. This boiling point is specifically about language. One bad word and one not-at-all bad word, both needlessly censored on cable television.

If you’re offended by words, you can still probably read this. After all, one of the words I’ve already used in the title because I do what I want. Retard. There I said it.

Retard is not a nice word.

It is an actual word, with a real definition, but when used to talk about someone who has mental retardation, it’s a not nice thing to say. Words like that are often co-opted out of context to make fun of people without a real disability. If you call someone with a mental handicap a retard, you’re a dick. If you call someone a bastard and they are one, you’re also kind of a dick. However, if you’re just trying to hurt someone’s feelings on the opposing dodgeball team, who is neither mentally retarded or a kid from an illegitimate partnering, and you call him a “retarded bastard,” you’re not that big of a dick. Kind of unsportsmanlike, but whatever.

So yeah, there are probably tens of hundreds of people (at most), who want the word retard treated with the same severity as “cunt,” but I’m not one of them. Further, when talking about arts and entertainment, a writer carefully crafts his words to reflect his characters. If a character uses the term retard, it reveals at least something about his character. In the case of Tropic Thunder, an entire joke is based on the idea of “going full retard.” It is one of the funniest bits of the movie and it made some stuffy old ladies mad. Boo hoo. Unfortunately, these same stuffy old ladies must have written in to FX, as when Tropic Thunder aired recently, Simple Jack was no longer retarded. He was special. Tugg Speedman no longer went full retard, he went “full special.”

What the retarded fucking fuck? Retard is not a curse word. It shouldn’t be treated like one. People can hear bad words. People can choose not to support whatever the fuck they want to not support. But killing that joke entirely to avoid upsetting a small subset of people? That’s bullshit. That’s… retarded. Tropic Thunder was airing on FX, which is part of expanded cable, and can definitely get away with saying retard. The fact that they edited out is frustratingly stupid.

Now, AMC’s Hell on Wheels dealt with a much more sensitive word. I’m not a child or a politician, so I’m not going to play around with you. How can I get mad at censorship and then censor myself? Set in the west shortly after the Civil War, Hell on Wheels obviously must dip its toes into racism – and you can’t have racism without some dirty-toothed cracker (racism) calling some black man a nigger (more racism, a white guy didn’t say ‘n-word!’).

Hell on Wheels smartly does the right thing when they’re trying to show you that an asshole military veteran (or three) is racist – the guy calls black workers niggers. Why? Because, primarily, that’s realistic as to what the character would have said and second, because a modern audience knows that’s a vile thing to call another person. So the show establishes two things with that exchange: a sense of realism and the alienation of that character from the audience. We know this guy is an asshole and we start to dislike him. Remember what I said about writers carefully choosing words? This is why. That one word, as opposed to “blackie” or whatever other less risky term they could come up with, sells the scene a lot better.

So wait – why am I mad then? Because of the closed captions. I normally don’t watch shows with the closed captioning on – I just turn that motherfucker way up. However, this instance I was watching with someone who likes to have the closed captioning on so I went with it. And that’s when I saw it. That’s when I read it. N.

N. Not “n-word.” Not “negro.” Definitely not “nigger.” But “N.” That’s what the closed captioning put in place of the word nigger.

This is offensively stupid. Almost as offensively stupid as editing Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” so that Nigger Jim becomes Slave Jim. You know what would be easier? If you just erased slavery and racism from the encyclopedia and history, so it was like it never happened! Also, let’s modify all works of art to be in no way offensive and also to not accurately reflect what the creator intended! Fuck art! Fuck history! Fuck it all, we’re dumb pussies!

It’s blatant censorship to remove the word nigger from the closed captioning. The television show writers made a choice to put the word in there. An artistically important choice. The producers, or whoever, and probably someone at AMC along the line, made the choice to let the word be in the show. There was no dictum to change it. So why then censor it on the closed captioning? It’s okay to hear it but not read it? Is it a typo on the screen now? What is happening? Why do that? What does N mean!?

Imagine, if you will, a viewer who is deaf. What are they to think? They can’t hear the word. Maybe in that scene they can’t read the lips of the actor, too. That character is now shed in a completely different light, against the intent of the author, or you’ve confused the deaf viewer.

That’s what this is all about – the intent of the author. As a writer myself, we choose words very specifically to make points or provide depth to a character. A show could have a character say “Man, that Greg sure is a racist” and that would be an example of bad writing, but it gets the information across. Or, the show could make the decision to have Greg act and speak like a racist – which is more effective; which is better?

Words hurt. Words offend. No shit, that’s why we came up with all sorts of nasty words – to hurt people. But these are works of fiction. Television, books, and movies are not authors reading their personal thoughts through a screen directed at a viewer. They’re creating a world, a realistic and deep world, full of characters with flaws, traits, and dirty vocabularies.

If you’re such a sensitive wee lass that you can’t handle even hearing these words in a fictional context, I feel bad for you son. That stick is way up your ass, jammed right into your cerebellum.

Hearing vile, or not so vile words, in a fictional context, is part of the experience. That’s the purpose. The words aren’t there to offend you, they’re not there to hurt your feelings, or your neighbor’s feelings. They are words coming from one fake character aimed at another fake character. Those two fake characters are at loggerheads and one is trying to make the other feel bad – so he’s using bad words. Every time I hear (or read) needless censorship, I rage past my boiling point.

R_ _ _   Mo_ _  Boiling  P_ _ _ _

This article has changed three times since I even started thinking about it. It began as a simple rant about prequels, but when my first example focused on Star Wars ran several hundred words, I then decided to focus on that. When that ran for over a thousand words before moving even half-way into my second point, I decided to scale that back a bit too and just focus on what I call the “timeline crunch” of the prequels.

The movies are coming back to theaters in 3D, so it’s kind of topical and I’m allowed to write whatever the hell I want, so how about you spend a few minutes listening to me rant about perhaps one of the smallest flaws of the prequels, but a flaw that has bothered me to no end for years.

The Timeline Crunch

You know, there are fourteen thousand things wrong with the Star Wars prequels. It would take several volumes to document their failures but for some reason the Timeline Crunch bothers me pretty badly.

Revenge of the Sith basically sees the birth of two things: The Galactic Empire and the Skywalker twins. To be clear, the Empire as we know it, the one that strikes back, does not exist until part-way through this film. Until this point, everyone is kind of a good guy, protecting Naboo and all that jazz. The entire Universal Government is a unified happy place, more or less. When A New Hope starts its title crawl, we know there is a period of galactic civil war and the Empire is this big scary monster, with a tight grip on the galaxy. They have soldiers and garrisons and bases everywhere. Tattooine is an admitted shit hole and yet there are Stormtroopers based there, complete with local Dewback mounts. They have new spacecraft that we’ve never seen before, like TIE Fighters and Imperial Star Destroyers (as opposed to Victory-Class Star Destroyers in the prequels), the Death Star has been built, and there are presumably hundreds of thousands of enlisted Stormtroopers, not just clones, because they have different voices.

Here is the problem for me – all of that happened in about 19 or 20 years. Luke is born at the end of Revenge of the Sith and he’s either 19 or 20 at the start of A New Hope. You’re telling me that all of that happened in just 20 years? I mean, we’re not even talking about something simple like rebuilding Germany or Japan after World War II, those are just countries on a world. We’re talking about multiple solar systems with multiple planets. The entire currency of the galaxy has been unified to Imperial Credits.  The Empire, which we’re to think is this horrible, domineering presence, has only existed for 19 years and yet they’ve accomplished all of these things, including coming up with new armor for their soldiers and equipping the millions of soldiers with it. Darth Vader is feared everywhere, yet what has he done for the past 20 years? Apparently a lot, and everywhere.

If you’re talking about a section of a world, sure, maybe someone can become a well known figure. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, these guys did a lot in 20 years, but their reach never extended beyond their neighborhood. The Emperor and Darth Vader extended their reach from known universe to known universe. In 20 years. When did the Empire become evil anyways? I mean, we see they’re kind of douchey at the end of ROTS and Obi-Wan and Yoda both flee into hiding for some reason, but again, 20 years of progress happens. New ships, new troops, new technology, new armor. One would think that Universally, this would become a problem at some point when people are like “Wait the Empire is dicks.” If you look at Germany, sure, they made a lot of technological advancements during World War II while being assholes, but after just a few years they had problems arming their troops and building their equipment. They basically designed the TIE Interceptor but had no way of actually producing it. But throughout the three good Star Wars movies, the Empire is turning out new equipment every installment. Different TIE variations. A second Death Star. A Super Star Destroyer.

When you really think about it, the Galactic Empire might have been the most amazing group of people ever assembled. They set some semblance of order in the galaxy, had enough manpower to police the whole thing, instituted a galactic currency, pioneered new technologies, and apparently had enough support to produce two Death Stars and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of fighters, bombers, and capital ships. You just can’t do that if you’re non-stop being evil as shit. I mean, again, twenty years! It takes twenty years for a modern aviation company to design and test an airplane, much less put 600 of them in a Star Destroyer and send it across the universe.

Call me crazy, but it seems like 20 years is far too short of a time period for all of this to have happened. We haven’t even talked about the “aging equipment” of the Rebel Alliance. How old can it be if it wasn’t old enough to be in the prequels, set between 20 and 40 years before A New Hope? The Rebels famously use X-Wings and Y-Wings against the Death Star and these craft have seen better days – but where do they come from?

There is nothing in the prequel trilogies that look anything like the X-,Y-,B-, or A-Wings we see in the original trilogy. Okay, actually one of them looks a bit like an A-Wing, which is strange, since the A-Wing doesn’t appear until Return of the Jedi, which would make it, presumably, one of the newer craft. If the Rebel Alliance is using old hand-me-down vehicles, why aren’t they what we saw in the prequels? After all, the Empire has abandoned all of those junkers because they’ve switched exclusively to the TIE line of craft. Where are those shitty Naboo fighters? Where are all these vehicles and why are none of them X-Wings?

The only logical answer would have to be that the X-Wings and Y-Wings are even OLDER than the prequels…or they were created and somehow became obsolete in that same 20 year period between trilogies.

Somehow, technology movies both backwards and forwards in this time period. Obviously it moves forward, as the Empire has created some hot new stuff, but then again, even the most brilliant and advanced military officers in the Imperial Navy (the guys serving with Darth Vader must be presumed to be the best) point out that no ship as small as the Millennium Falcon can have a cloaking device. Well, except that Darth Maul, a servant of the EMPEROR OF THE EMPIRE had a cloaking device on his even smaller ship. I mean, it’s kind of strange to think that the Emperor personally knew about cloaking devices and yet somehow that technology, which is probably pretty badass, not only never appears again, but is functionally forgotten, even from the Imperial “West Point Level” graduates.

I just don’t see why the movies had to be set so closely together. The original films always talked about these events like they were so long ago. Why did Anakin have to be like 18 during the Clone Wars? Why couldn’t the films have been set even further back? Jedi are pretty robust people, Obi-Wan could easily live to be more than a hundred years old. Same goes for the Emperor and Darth Vader. You could easily shift the films back at least 20 or 30 more years. The Clone Wars should have been ages ago, the way people talk about them. Yet, Anakin serves for a few years before going totally evil on us and then dying at what, age 50?

In designing the vehicles of the films, did they forget the original movies existed? Wouldn’t it have been cool to see the evolution of the X-Wing? Or to see Y-Wings appear as cutting edge bombers back then? You know, like having the movies be smartly connected and unified rather than whatever it is we got? Sigh.

Bonus Brief: Characters Have Shitty Memories

R2-D2 excluded, since he remembers Obi-Wan Kenobi, or so it would seem. Obi-Wan, on the other hand, must have smoked plenty of that space weed, since he doesn’t remember either R2 or C-3PO, despite going on many adventures with the pair, spending dozens of hours with each, and basically witnessing the birth of 3PO at the hands of Anakin, something he’d probably remember considering how, oh I don’t know, his entire life revolved around Anakin Skywalker for almost two decades.

Similarly, Darth Vader, aka Anakin, seems to have forgotten that Tattooine existed or that it was important in any way, since it took so long for the Empire to end up back there, despite Vader presumably wanting to murder Ben Kenobi and what not. It was either brilliance or sheer stupidity that Obi-Wan decided to go hide out at perhaps the most important planet in Darth Vader’s life, one that he lived on and returned to and experienced traumatic losses at. He also boned Padme for the first time there, if I can read between the “I killed them all” slaughter kiss lines. Not only that, but Obi-Wan wasn’t too far away from well known city centers full of scumbags and lowlifes who would definitely turn him in for a few bucks.

Vader also comes mask to robotic face with C-3PO on more than instance in the good movies and never once does he think “Man that guy looks and sounds familiar” or “Hey what the fuck series of events had to have happened for my son to come into ownership of the droid I built and the R2 unit that served by my side for fifteen years during the Clone Wars?” Additionally, Yoda seems to have also forgotten about R2-D2 – though the droid maybe didn’t forget about him, since R2 was a dick to him, even knowing that Yoda was once a wise and respected warrior a scant 30 years ago.

In short, fuck you, George. Fuck you. Almost everything about the Star Wars prequels drives me past my boiling point.

The Devil Inside is the talk of the town for two reasons: number one, it made around $35 million in its opening weekend, which is big no matter what qualifier you tack on, but when that qualifier is a reported $1 million acquisition cost, it’s gigantic. Number two (heheh), it sucks. It sucks bad.

That’s nothing new, really, as everything about The Devil Inside screams shitty movie. First of all, it’s from the team that brought you Stay Alive. Second, it’s found footage. Third, it’s an exorcism movie. I’m surprised that people went to see it, because you list those three qualities and I am about as far from interested as possible.

But rather than just throw another voice on the “what the fuck” bonfire, I wanted to take a few minutes and examine what we can learn from this situation.

First, CinemaScore is apparently both useless and broken. For those of you that don’t know, CinemaScore is market research firm that uses test audiences to grade movies and then predict their box office. The Devil Inside accomplished the rare feat of being granted a CinemaScore of F. CinemaScore says that any film getting a C is generally going to be a failure, while films that achieve the F rating are disasters that shouldn’t even be released. The Devil Inside marks only the sixth time a film has been given an F rating.

Clearly, we can see that the CinemaScore is not always accurate; you don’t finish first with over $34 million if your film is a failure that shouldn’t have been released in the first place. Further, when the grade breakdown was revealed, mathematically speaking The Devil Inside seemed that it should have been ranked somewhere around a C. Now, what exactly goes into the decision of the final grade we don’t know, but it would seem that this system is far from perfect.

We also learn from this experience that audiences love horror, but more narrowly, audiences love original or new horror. It doesn’t matter that The Devil Inside is just another in a long line of shitty exorcism movies because it is, at least, not a sequel, prequel, or remake. Horror movies traditionally make good money at the box office, especially original movies which tend to be lower budget, as their margin for success is considerably lower. If you look at the career of Rob Zombie, his small films come in under $10 million and generally make more than $12 million domestically. I find this relevant as his small films don’t have wide audiences and are a bit off kilter, yet people want original horror. You can contrast this with a bigger budget prequel/remake from 2011, The Thing, which opened around $8 million and finished near $16 million with a production budget of almost $40 million.

I think it would be smart to take away from this that original movies fare better than remakes or sequels and that smaller budgets can generate good returns. In the case of The Devil Inside, the minuscule budget is unknown, but it’s said that it was acquired for a price of $1 million. If I were a gambling man, I’d say that puts the filming costs of the film below $250,000. Obviously a fair bit of money was spent in the advertising, which paid off to the tune of $34 million. No matter what accounting method you use, this film is in the black already.

Unfortunately, another lesson that we learned is that for some reason found footage movies are not shooing away audiences. This one I don’t get as I’m not a fan of a single one. I dug Cloverfield, but think it would have been far better as a regular movie. The Blair Witch Project didn’t blow me away, but it was pretty effective and among the best of the genre would probably be [REC]. Still, I generally think “found footage” is a gimmick that no one falls for – no one thinks this is real, so why do? I’m not just a fan of the method of story telling, I think it looks shitty and doesn’t make sense. In a movie like Cloverfield, why the fuck would anyone spend time getting reaction shots or point the camera away from the giant awesome monster tearing up the city? Found footage blows, but apparently it still earns.

I guess congratulations are in order to those involved with the movie – they pulled one off here, against all odds, this pile of shit won the weekend and made a lot of cash. There are valuable lessons to be learned from failure and success and the success of failures. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of films that are more deserving of an audience this wide and the fact that those films don’t get the support they need and the exposure causes me to projectile vomit my  boiling point all over a holy man.

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Anyway, let’s take a look back at my look forward and see how things panned out.

10. Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon Criticisms. Yup, hated the anti-Michael Bay, anti-Transformers criticisms, but they were nowhere near as bad as those that surrounded Revenge of the Fallen. Aided a lot by the fact that TF3 was actually a good movie, there were still some stubborn people who refuse to have fun at the movies and want to poo-poo on Bay.

9. X-Men: First Class. I was wrong about this one – loved the movie. It was on the list because I really do not like any installment of the X-Men franchise, this one is easily my favorite.

8. Beastly. Easy choice, of course this piece of shit movie was a predictable piece of shit that should have been sent to Lifetime.

7. The Smurfs. There were no surprises here as The Smurfs gave everyone critical blue balls. There are two types of kids movies – ones that kids enjoy but are secretly just good movies, and then there are piles like this and the Chipmunks that are just mindless kid drivel.

6. Straw Dogs Remake. This isn’t really worthy of my hate, but only because it wasn’t really worth of any attention.

5. Mother’s Day. Boy did I hate this movie when I saw it in late 2010, but it wasn’t released in 2011. Whatever year it will get released, that is the year I will hate it again.

4. Twilight Saga Hatred. I’ve previously defended Twilight fans as they’ve bared the brunt of a lot of undue hatred. While everyone still mocks this franchise openly, it seems as though the fans have gotten a reprieve and the bile spilled in 2011 wasn’t all that acidic.

3. Big Mommas. I don’t want to live on this planet anymore. This deserves all of my hate and all of yours too.

2. Glee. Does this show still exist? I’m blinded by my hatred for it. I hate this show and most of the people who watch it. Except the hot ones. But Glee still sucks.

1. Celebrity Death Reactions. It annoys me when people lose their shit over celebrity deaths. I didn’t know Heath Ledger, so I didn’t shed any tears or build a statue of him out of butter. In 2011, the public at large didn’t make a big deal out of most celebrity deaths, so this didn’t register on my radar, possibly because most movie star deaths were overshadowed by big ticket political deaths.

I guess the big surprise is actually that a lot of the things I thought I would hate ended up just not being an issue. Otherwise, X-Men: First Class was the only thing that really went against expectations and blew me away. Glee still sucks.

Get angry and read more Boiling Point

As a way of saying so long to 2011 and hello to the End of the World as We Know It (aka 2012), I wanted to take a brief look back at the previous year and pull the heaviest themes from Boiling Point and take a look at the recipients of my rage. So take off your shoes, grab a warm cup of cocoa and let’s take this journey together, provided you’re nowhere near me. If by some strange miracle you are near me, put your shoes on, put down my coffee cup and get the fuck out of my house.

The Frailty of the Human Condition

In 2011 I turned my rage on the portrayal of human tolerance towards injury and death on several occasions. I pointed out how people in films died with alarming speed from things like gunshots and stab wounds, even when those were applied to areas that should have resulted in long, slow painful deaths. Though I guess dying too fast from a lethal injury was better than one of my other anger issues, dying from things that wouldn’t kill you, like ninja stars and throwing knives that don’t penetrate far enough. If you’re a henchman, you are apparently rather frail and easily killed.

Then again, many characters out there proved to be over-resilient to many types of injuries. They casually got thrown dozens of feet by explosions and rather than doing the sensible thing and dying because their internal organs ruptured, they got right back up and kept on running. Dozens of heroes where choked unconscious or knocked out with great regularity and one can only assume they skipped their MRIs and CAT scans, otherwise they would have found irreversible brain damage and death on the schedule. A few fellows in horror movies also decided to spill their blood by cutting the palms of their hands. Luckily they had speedy recoveries that took only hours, rather than suffering through the extended healing time of a frequently moving area that would most likely require immobilization and constant care to maintain the proper elasticity. Oh well!

The Sad State of Horror

As a huge horror fan, I have suffered the slings and arrows of horrible films over and over again. In 2011 I lamented the absence of monsters in horror movies. What did we get? The tiny little cretins of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and a lame alien ripping off another (maybe) alien in Super 8? Gone are the days of big monsters, or hell, even regular sized monsters. What we need are the return of werewolves and other epic beasts to terrorize and tear up teenagers.

I also shed a tear in October as I’ve done almost every year for the lack of horror movies surrounding Halloween. The past few years have given us nothing but Paranormal Activity and Saw movies in major, wide releases. I still maintain that any half-way decent horror movie will give you a god damn landslide of cash if you release it close to Halloween. Guarantee it!

When Movie Makers Miss the Point

While I actually enjoyed The Thing (2011) quite a bit, that didn’t stop me from pointing out the obvious flaw in the film – no, not a plot hole, but rather a lack of practical special effects. A HUGE part of the magic in the original are the special effects. It’s impossible to fathom how a movie made nearly 30 years ago can have amazing practical effects and a movie made now can’t. Apparently they started with practical effects and then covered them up digitally. So much for 30 years of progress, right?

Sometimes my anger comes on early, too early really to judge a project, and that was the case with the Evil Dead remake announcements. My dislike of Diablo Cody’s dialog has been well documented, so clearly I was no fan of her addition to the film, nor was I glad to hear that Fede Alvarez won the job based on the ‘strength’ of his short film, a few minutes of storyless, plotless, characterless CGI. Much like The Thing, Evil Dead did wonders with limited technology. Sam Raimi’s classic was all about corn syrup and red food coloring, not digital animation. Sorry but I don’t get excited over some computer whiz kid taking over a blood and guts horror movie.

Worst of all, though, was when the official announcement described the production as using new film making techniques that weren’t available 30 years ago, basically a forewarning that CGI was coming. No. Fucking. Thanks.

The Theater Experience

I had some strange times in 2011 at the movies and some frustrating ones as well. My experience with Insidious was marred by talkers, while my enjoyment of Attack the Block was stifled by some assholes who thought they were heroes by being really loud in their attempt to make others be quiet. Seriously. The Hushers where making a bigger disturbance than the Hushees. It’s perfectly all right to tell someone to shut the fuck up if they’re being noisy, but don’t make a bigger scene by doing it.

2011 was also my breaking point with theater slobs, many of whom were my fellow critics. If you take it into the theater with you, bring it out. Your soda cup, your popcorn, your milkduds, your napkins. Clean your fucking area up. Don’t be a slob. Don’t be an asshole. If you want to use that sorry excuse that it’s “someones job” to clean up after you – fuck you. That’s like saying it’s okay to start fires because it’s a firefighters job to put them out. If you leave your trash in the theater, you’re an asshole.

The Walking Dead

The last quarter of the year was perhaps mostly a time for me airing out my dislike of AMC’s The Walking Dead. As a huge fan of the comics, I’ll simply say it one more time: the TV show went off course immediately by not following the comics. With writer changes and show runner changes frequently, this show has had a troubled past and will most likely have a troubled future. It’s an overly dramatic melodrama that gets a lot of slack just for featuring zombies, but not from me. This show is shit.

So there it is, the greatest hits, err, misses, of 2011. What will I fucking hate in 2012? There’s only one way to find out – seeya next year.

How have we as a country let this happen? Where have we gone wrong? Reuters, The Daily Mail, they’re all reporting the lackluster year Hollywood has had. This is serious, people. This is big news. Studio executives everywhere are “battling” against a soft audience and struggling to match the numbers of previous years.

Let me find my tiny violin, will you?

Who feels bad for Hollywood? Not me. I mean, first of all, 1.2 billion movie tickets were sold. That’s a lot of tickets. We’re only looking at a decline of around 12% and with an average U.S. ticket price of $7.89, that gives us ticket receipts in the neighborhood of $9,500,000,000. That’s around 9.5 billion dollars. I have trouble feeling sympathy when the industry as a whole is selling that many tickets because we’re not counting rentals, home video sales, and all the other stuff that bring cash into the system.

Making movies is a business, and it’s a big business, but let’s be careful where we assign the blame. It’s not like audiences are to blame for not going to the movies more often. You can say the economy is down, but clearly that’s not a huge factor since the drop in sales isn’t all that much. Look at the popular movies this year – they’re still amazingly profitable. A movie like Transformers 3 still pulled in a ton of dough to the tune of more than $350m. The news agency points to the relatively disappointing opening of Sherlock Holmes, but what they’re forgetting to take into account is that the first film is lackluster. Who came out of that movie loving it? Not many people I know. Sure, it was serviceable, but not one that made me want to rush out and see the next one. Same story on the soft opening of that shitty Chipmunks sequel.

If Hollywood wants to bring more people into the theaters or increase revenue, there are a couple of things they could try. Like first, making better movies. Put a little effort into what you’re pumping out, eh? Second, spend less money making movies. When you blow upwards of $100m on a shitty film, yeah, you’re going to have trouble making that money back. Third, negotiate new deals with the theater chains. Cut the ticket price down a bit, so money is less of a factor.

Let’s not pretend for one second that when people want to see a movie, that they won’t see it. I guarantee you The Dark Knight Rises is going to make money hand over batfist. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol made some solid money from its early opening, showing a good pace. People will pay to see movies if you make it worth it.

So cry all you want, Hollywood, but you will be crying alone and I don’t even have a violin to play for you. Ticket sales are down, sort of. Some months weren’t, some films do well, that’s the nature of capitalism. Remember, this is a business – make a better product and more people will buy it. But I’ve got no sympathy any time I see a boo-hoo box office is down news article and I go a little bit past my boiling point.

Dry your tears and read more Boiling Point

Yes, this article is years behind, but after revisiting some comedy classics like Ace Ventura: Pet Detecitve and Billy Madison, I just can’t look at another fucking Jack and Jill billboard without saying something. What happened to these guys? Money, success, power, time. Yes, all of those things happened to them and generally that leads to a downslide in movie quality. Or at least a downslide to a different type of comedy. Maybe there is an age where even the most immature of us suddenly grows up and doesn’t want to talk out of his asshole or argue the finer points of shampoo versus conditioner.

Fear not, dear readers, for I have not yet reached that age.

No, I still relish fart jokes and bask in their warmth. I’ll take half-pint after half-pint of milk from children and never tell anyone. They don’t gots to know about it – it could be our milk god damn it. However, it seems that Carrey & Sandler, once carriers of the titty joke torch left us long ago. Revisiting their filmographies strangely reveals that they disappeared roughly around the same time period: 2000.

It was then Adam Sandler stumbled with Little Nicky, recovering slightly but more maturely in Big Daddy, before moving on to Punch Drunk Love and then never really returning to his childish roots of humor. Jim Carrey’s Truman Show was in 1998, but he tried to get dirty again in 2000′s Me, Myself, and Irene before leaving the crazy train behind in favor of The Majestic. After that, his ass was never to speak a word again.

So where are they now? Sitting on heaps of beautiful money. Sandler has recently given us Grown Ups, Just Go With It, and the abysmal cinematic abortion that is Jack and Jill. Even if you find some measure of humor in any of these, you’ve got to admit the guy has gone soft on us. Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore pretty much define my sense of humor. I miss that lovable moron. Seeing a cross-dressing Sandler sitting on a CGI pony that collapses under the weight of his fat suit doesn’t harken back to fond memories, it makes me shed a sad tear, like an Italian actor overlooking a garbage dump.

I’m actually a fan of Carrey’s Yes Man, which proves that these guys can still make entertaining movies, but they’re just so different. Recall Fire Marshall Bill, Ace Ventura, Stanley Ipkiss or even the dreaded Cable Guy. He was so animated and different and entertaining in an offbeat way. Where did that go? Did he grow up? Did Jenny McCarthy make him skip too many booster shots?

Both of these guys are fine entertainers and are obviously doing the right kinds of things to make shit tons of money. They’ve changed their focus from appealing to guys like me and to appealing to families – there’s a lot of money to be had there. I like money. I do. I get it. I don’t even know what I would do for fourteen million dollars, but I can guarantee you it would be far more degrading than Messing with the Zohan.

That said, as I age (not mature) and approach crotchety old man standards, I can complain about missing things from my youth or yearn for the way things used to be. I want a fucking idiot Adam Sandler movie. I want the last ten years of them. I want a wild and crazy Jim Carrey. Fucking Ace Ventura is hilarious even on a rewatch, but it’s like watching an alien performance, knowing who and what Jim Carrey is now.

To be clear, I am not necessarily upset at these guys. The money they were offered would corrupt any man’s soul. The studios saw these popular guys and wanted to capitalize on that by putting them into more family-friendly movies. That’s the nature of the business. While I feel ripped off in the transaction, I understand. I just wanted to formally, a decade late, say goodbye to the movies these guys made that influenced me so heavily. Those days are gone and when I see them on TV, I can’t help but fondly remember the good old days briefly before my rage at their loss settles in and I go past my boiling point.

But hey…guys…If you want to try to make this type of movie again…I’ll be waiting. No homo.

Need more anger in your life? Read more Boiling Point.

You may have heard that Seth Grahame-Smith has sold another of his books to Hollywood. Unholy Night, which releases next year, will be a revisionist take on the story of the three wise men who are now thieves or something. I don’t know, I’ll wait for the movie. Or not, because while Grahame-Smith has sold three of his revisionist novels, not a single one has made it to theaters yet. You probably heard of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies at Lionsgate or Fox’s adaptation of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Heard of them, seen the book covers, but when it comes to seeing any real progress on the films, ha. Never mind. Toss another one of these on the pile, amirite?
Grahame-Smith isn’t the only author to make the big break of selling his book to Hollywood only to watch the wheels spin. Max Brooks, son of Mel, sold the rights to his World War Z like 7 years ago and the film doesn’t have much to show for itself other than some finger paintings. Steve Alten has written several popular books about the ocean’s greatest all time killer Megalodon in his books Meg, and while none of them have managed to make it to the screen, we’ve been treated to dozens of shitty rip-off shark movies that have gone straight to DVD or straight to the toilet. The classic Ender’s Game is currently looking like it’s going to finally be a movie, but with a long history of not being a movie, don’t count your chickens before they hatch.

This poses a question: why does this happen? Well with something like Ender’s Game, you have some difficult material to translate into a broadly appealing PG-13 film. But then that begs the question- if it’s hard to make into a movie, why fucking buy it? Watchmen was kicked around for a long time because it was difficult to make and it turns out that when you make difficult movies, they don’t really make a lot of money. Because, well, they’re difficult. So you either have to change the film (boo) or make a movie that can’t turn a profit, which reminds us that some books are just better as books and aren’t meant for the screen.

Well then how about any of these Grahame-Smith books? Or fucking World War Z, a zombie movie? None of these pose ethical, moral, or technological troubles. No, Hollywood is just greedy and jealous. They hear tell of something make a few bucks and they want to make those bucks too, which is why they buy up the rights to books. I’m sure plenty of books have been bought without anyone at the studio bothering to read the damn thing – who cares, it’s a best seller.

Sure, Tom Cruise is a handsome fellow, and I’m not staring at his pants out of lust, but rather, out of confusion. Why am I seeing his ankles? Wait, why is he wearing climbing shoes? Are those capri pants?

This is not the manly wardrobe of the world’s greatest super spy.

It’s probably sexist to say this, but spies are supposed to be manly. Quick, name a spy. You said James Bond, one of the manliest men to ever live, stylish as hell too. But I don’t think he wore capri pants when it was time for ass kicking. Ethan Hunt, on the other hand, is not afraid to show some ankle.

The Mission:Impossible movie franchise has a few tricks it likes to play, first among the masks, and second, Ethan Hunt doing some crazy climbing, flipping, wirework stuff. In the first film, Hunt dangles above a keyboard, while in the second, he goes rock climbing. In part three, he swings between Shanghai buildings and in Ghost Protocol he scales the Burj Khalifa. Clearly this super spy isn’t afraid of heights or tight pants, and he apparently keeps climbing shoes in his bag at all times just in case.

In the first and third installments, Hunt is suitably masculine, looking like a savvy spy in the first film and an ass kicking special forces operative in the third. Much like the Star Trek curse though, in the other installments he trades in his man card for comfort, looking a little bit like a daisy in the second film in his cuffed khakis, while in the newest installment he against rolls his pant legs up for maximum climbing comfort.

Look, I’ll be honest with you – I don’t know much about climbing and I guess I don’t know much about climbing fashion, but I’ll be damned if I don’t know awesome action heroes and they don’t roll their pant legs up. Is this a silly complaint? Most definitely. But it sticks out. Hunt isn’t wearing capri pants, but when I make this joke to friends, they all get it – and maybe you do too.

When the world needs saving, do you want the man who answers the call to be wearing short pants and ballet slippers, or do you want him looking like a tactical badass ready to dropkick a man out of an airplane? There is no doubt that Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is a bad mother, one that can kick ass and take NOC Lists – but does he have to look like a sissy while doing it?

The Mission: Impossible films are, for the most part, fun. The wirework is excellent and Tom Cruise does all his own stunts, which is admirable and awesome. He likes to flip through the air like a modern ninja and that’s cool with me. Hunt can run down buildings all he wants, but can he at least wear man pants while doing it? After all, he’s representing bad ass American spies everywhere. As silly as it is and as heart pounding as the scenes are, every time I see Hunt in sissy pants, I roll up on my boiling point.

Roll your pants down and read more Boiling Point

On one side, the Walking Deadheads. Those who can’t get enough of the AMC television series. On the other side, people who just can’t be bothered to give a damn. Scratch that. They do give a damn. A negative damn. A “this show blows” damn.  And gosh darnit, neither side likes the other.

While the two will probably never see eye to eye, you either dig the melodrama or you don’t, there is one argument that is thrown out over and over again: If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. Well that’s bullshit. Mostly.

Just to get the obvious out of the way first – if you don’t like something, sure, it makes sense not to watch it. But then again, a lot of the complaints are coming from “faces and names” on the Internet, people who make some sort of living or hobby out of watching things and talking about it. So it makes sense to watch it even if you don’t like it.

The real reason this argument bothers me is because it’s so non-specific. It can literally be used against anything. Oh, you don’t like horror remakes? Don’t watch them. You don’t like Michael Bay movies? Don’t watch them. You have an opinion on anything, don’t express it. In fact, no one should Facebook or Twitter their opinion ever, because it might hurt some feelings or make people disagree with you.

People love to complain and it does get tiring, but there is a huge hypocrisy about it. If you’re going to complain, you need to hear the complaints of others. The internet was made so people could argue faster and more often, so that’s what we do. I never back down from a fight over Transformers or some shitty horror movie that actually isn’t shitty damn it. So listen up, we’re well within our rights to hate The Walking Dead and we’re going to continue watching it and, unfortunately, we’ll probably keep hating it.

Unless, that is, the show goes back to its written roots. The comic books are some of my favorite that I’ve ever read. They’re full of not melodrama, but real drama, with complex characters faced with horrific things on a daily basis. In the comic, the characters wouldn’t spend 8 days searching for a lost girl, because they would have found her on the second day, entrails strewn across the ground. And in their search someone else would have died in vain. These aren’t spoilers for the comic – none of this happened – and that’s the fucking point.

I don’t really like The Walking Dead television series because it abandons the source material, which I love. It’s like not enjoying a movie because the book was better and, further, the movie had very little to do with the book. We can all agree that’s usually bullshit. Why brand something in name only? AMC’s The Walking Dead isn’t quite to “in name only” territory, but they’ve added new, cliched characters (the racist brothers, foremost) and left out some truly traumatic shit. I’m not going to give it a break just because “it’s zombies on TV” or horror on TV. It has to be good horror. It has to be engaging zombie drama. Where else do we “take what we can get?” No thanks, I’ll continue to be critical of things I don’t like – because I don’t like them, and because I’m paid to do so.

It’s kind of a free speech deal. I’ll listen to your bullshit and you listen to mine. You’ll argue The Twins in Transformers 2 are racist, I’ll argue that they’re not. Maybe I’ll tell you to skip the next Micheal Bay film since you clearly hate them, but if you decide to keep watching them, I’ll keep arguing the points with you. So watch what you want and hate you want, just give me the same freedom. I’m going to keep watching The Walking Dead even if I don’t like it, and I’m going to keep bitching about it. If you’ve got a problem with that, you’re past your boiling point. Welcome to it, because I’m past mine because you keep telling me not to watch what I want to comment on. So we can all just suck it.

Express your freedom of speech below and read more Boiling Point

And they want to be bigger, like all businesses. Enter the shady world of rehashing. The repeated raping of your wallet. There was a time when it was as simple as releasing a Special Edition or Collector’s Edition of a movie. Now, films have two theatrical releases, get remastered in 3D and sent to theaters, and are then released on three to four separate DVD releases.

As a super-fan, I’m excited to get Collector’s Editions – I’ll even double dip now and then, but the process has gone too far and offers too little.The word rehash has a very specific definition: to bring forth again in another form without significant alteration. By definition, you could have a standard DVD release and a Collector’s Edition and it wouldn’t be a rehash. A Criterion Collection is not a rehash of a previous release because a lot of stuff is added. That’s one way to make money, but the profit margin just isn’t big enough. You see, to provide another edition of a movie that actually adds something, it takes money and work and work takes more money. It’s expensive to create a lot of extra special features, so it’s easier if you just don’t have to do that.

Now, Hollywood isn’t lazy, so they’re willing to do that work, but they’d like to get paid for it twice. An increasingly common and increasingly bullshitesque technique is to release a movie to home video with nothing on the discs, and then release the actual version you’d want to own later, hoping that you buy both. The two most recognizable examples of this are currently Avatar, which released nothing-added discs “to meet the urgent demand” of people to see it again, and then later released a bigger Collector’s Edition, and Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon, which did the same thing. Technically neither of these is a rehash, but both are fucking stupid. I actually pre-ordered Transformers 3, but luckily it was brought to my attention that the disc was bare, so I cancelled my order in time. Lame shit.

When you want to talk rehashes, you simply can’t ignore The Evil Dead franchise. There are several different DVD releases of each movie in the trilogy and several different Blu-rays and each one with the most minimal amount of changes – basically put a new cover on it, release it again, and watch the suckers buy it. Kind of a bitch move.

But the absolute worst, in my opinion, is something like a backsliding rehash. A re-release of a movie to home video that actually is worse than the one that came before it. A release that actually loses special features, or that presents them in a worse way.

Unfortunately, beautiful Blu-ray has opened up a wonderful world of profit that must be exploited. If you’ve ever switched back and forth between watching DVDs and Blu-rays, the difference is staggering and extremely noticeable, provided you have an HDTV. So people want to upgrade their favorite movies to Blu-ray. To meet this demand, Hollywood is more than happy to transfer the films to HD, but they’re not so keen on spending the time and money to send over the extras.

So now, when you upgrade your film to Blu-ray, you can potentially lose a lot of features. I have owned two DVD copies of John Carpenter’s The Thing because I absolutely fucking love that movie, but I resisted purchasing it on Blu-ray for (literally) years because virtually all of the special features were gone, replaced with the useless built-in Blu-ray features like U-Control Picture in Picture and the riveting U-Control Tutorial.

This is worse than a rehash. I finally broke down and buy The Thing on Blu-ray after a coworker told me the quality of the picture was exceptional, but I can’t get rid of the DVD copy, because it has all the special features on it. So now I’m stuck with two discs, one for the picture quality on the movie and one for the extras I want to see. A true first world problem if ever there were one.

It comes down on us as consumers to make the choices between what we buy and what we don’t. We have to pay attention and make sure we’re not falling prey to rehashes, double dips, and bare bones releases. That’s true – but it’s bullshit that Hollywood is nickel and diming us, considering how much of our money we’re already giving them. We demand full, worthwhile releases of our favorite films, so why doesn’t Hollywood supply them? Personally, anytime I come across a blatant cash-grabbing rehash or an abysmal, bare re-release, I go past my boiling point.

For even more rehashes, read past editions of Boiling Point

In television, everyone seems like they’re in a huge hurry to die. Granted, the world of make believe is at least as dangerous as the real one, in fact, it’s infinitely more so. In a regular day, most of us won’t contend with tornadoes, Megasnakes, Sharktopi, advanced alien civilizations, primitive monsters, serial killers, psycho killers, bank robbers or mutated man-beast hybrids. Sure, there are some exceptional days, but for the most part we don’t have as much to worry about.

Regardless of what Last Action Hero says, I think we also have it safer, after all, we don’t just instantly drop dead at the slightest provocation.

For our cinematic brothers, life isn’t as kind. Death is around every corner and when he comes, he comes running. If you’re lucky enough to be the protagonist, or the antagonist, or perhaps just someone with a name not an occupational credit (Thug #4), you are potentially superhuman. You can take bullet wounds, explosions, and tremendous falls and just walk it off.

Find yourself below the line and making a day-rate, well brother you’re about to get proper fucked proper fast. On screen, death is almost always instantaneous. Shot in the stomach? Dead. Hit with a ninja star? Dead. Shot with an arrow? Definitely dead.

Where is the pain? The suffering? The horror of it all? These things aren’t immediately life threatening, in fact, sometimes they’re not even potentially fatal at all. You know how many people have died from ninja stars? I have nothing to back this up but I’m pretty sure the answer is zero. Throwing knives have a similarly low fatality rate, for the same reason – they don’t penetrate enough to kill people most of the time.

There are only a few immediately fatal targets on the body. If I’m being generous, the brain, the spine, the heart, and major arteries in the neck, leg, and groin are all viable “kill you in under 15 seconds” zones. Places that aren’t instantly fatal? Most of the chest, virtually all of the legs, parts of the face, pretty much all of the arms. Any damage to these areas, in most circumstances, isn’t going to kill you in the next 30 minutes. If you take a ninja star to the chest, you could honestly pull out that .25″ of penetrating steel and slap a bandage on it. You might need stitches, worst case scenario.

Three Kings did a decent job showing you what’s actually possible if you get shot in the lung – you can walk for miles with basic first aid and not die. A movie like Commando does a shitty job of showing you what happens when you take one bullet to the anywhere, and instantly flip end over end and explode in death.

And it isn’t just bullets. I’m not sure what it is about the bow and arrow that makes it especially deadly, but in westerns and other period films, taking a single arrow anywhere in your body pretty much meant you doubled over and died.

Horror movies are pretty terrible at killing people when you think about it. When Jason Voorhees snaps your body in two or knocks your head off, yeah you’re definitely dead, but when you get stabbed in the stomach in a Scream movie or catch a knife in the back, you wouldn’t drop down dead. You might drop down and sure you might die, but it’s going to take awhile. There’s going to be some screaming, some bleeding, and some pain.

Why ignore this? Fine – you want to move the plot along and get our hero past these minor players and onto the main fight, but wouldn’t it be a nice change to see some realistic injuries? If you’re looking to make a gritty film, don’t have the bad guys drop and have the lights turn out immediately. Let them suffer. Let them bleed. Because that’s fucked up – and that’s gritty. Plus, it’s more realistic. Death comes at his own pace, which usually takes fifteen or more minutes.

According to SpikeTV’s 1,000 Ways to Die there are at least one thousand ways to die, but they’re not all instant. Every time I see a sissy wound or a slow burner drop a man instantly, I go past my boiling point. Let the bastards suffer.

If you’re still alive, read more Boiling Point

We like shows about ultimate badasses. USA’s Burn Notice is very popular and used to be amazing – now it’s just pretty good – and it’s about an ultimate badass. A superspy who used to be heartless and presumably handed out death like candy. He’s teamed up with an ex-Navy SEAL, world renowned for their killing progress, and his terrorist IRA girlfriend who has definitely blown people up. When you take three of the most dangerous people on Earth and set them against really bad men, you’d expect a lot of blood, right? Wrong. Michael Westen has killed maybe one person in five years. Not very badass.

So come on, let’s kill more people.

Fox and Marvel are teaming up to (vomit) reimagine The Punisher as a cop who only moonlights as a vigilante. One is probably safe to assume that in his world, punishment is a harsh beating and 4-6 years for attempted robbery. That is not who Frank Castle is or what Frank Castle does. Frank Castle shoots crime point blank in the face with a shotgun, then uses bone shards to blind mafia henchmen. I’m sure you could make a decent Punisher show on network TV, you just have to stay true to the character and let him kill people.

Why do shows refuse to kill people? Take a look at Terra Nova, where the settles are pretty constantly attacked or harassed by ‘The Sixers.’ Despite this constant tension and despite the fact that the residents of Terra Nova have approximately 10 times as many bodies and presumably a lot more resources, vehicles, and weaponry and despite being led by the ultimate hard ass soldiers, they don’t do shit about it. If you’re stuck sixty million years in the past, surrounded by dinosaurs, and dependent on what supplies you can make, when some asshole tries to steal your medical supplies and endanger your people, you don’t let him go with a warning or trade him. You shoot him on the spot.

There are dozens of shows on television right now that feature what we’re told very dangerous people with very dangerous skills in very life threatening situations. Whether it’s Leverage or Burn Notice, Prime Suspect, Castle, Criminal Minds, CSI, Bones or The Mentalist, characters with a lot of responsibility are put in situations all the time where the correct answer is to pull the trigger and kill someone.

So why isn’t anyone dying? Despite this list of people not killing others, death is always on TV. More than half of those shows start with a death – someone murdered, generally, and then our heroes go off in search of a culprit. With something like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit we see some heinous stuff – like guys getting their dicks chopped off, children raped, or old people set on fire. Granted, we don’t often see this in any detail, but if this gruesome level of violence can be depicted to any degree, why can’t a good guy shoot a bad guy who deserves it? Is there some construct in people’s heads saying “good guys don’t kill?” Because that’s bullshit. Good people can kill. Especially when the bad guy is threatening someone actively. You don’t have to talk them down – plus, this is television, not real life, so why can’t see some fatal ass whooping?

One show which is helping to push the boundary is Person of Interest. Jim Caviezel’s character has killed a few people, but he’s definitely not afraid to walk into a room full of degenerate criminals and shoot them in the femurs. In a way, is that worse than killing someone? Brutally handicapping them and taking away their mobility for the rest of their lives? Hell, some of these guys are dying off screen most likely. So that’s awesome. I dig this guy shooting bad dudes.

Death is a part of life and it’s also a part of entertainment. If you want to sell me a show based on the ultimate bad mother fucker who punishes bad mother fuckers, odds are this guy is going to end some lives – and that’s good. That’s great. That’s what he’s supposed to do. It’s in character for The Punisher, with ice in his veins, to put a gun to a rapist’s head and blow his brains out. Some of the shows I mentioned are mostly comedy (Castle), but they put their characters in real mortal danger where the answer is – shoot them. Sometimes they do, so that’s good, but really, if you want to see me a badass, show me a badass. I don’t want to hear about how cool and dangerous he was, I want to witness how badass he is. Every time I see a mother fucking hardcore ass-busting killer on TV leave someone for the cops, I go past my boiling point.

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To combat these varied dangers, a hero must go armed. The proper choice of weapon depends on the threat faced, availability, and the environment. I’m not sure anyone has ever fought a hillbilly without the aide of a bow or crossbow, stopped a robbery without a pistol, or put down a zombie apocalypse without the use of a shotgun.

In the face of such great dangers, you’d think that the protagonist would make sure that he and his companions were always well equipped to face adversity. But you’d be wrong.

It’s a strange thing, watching a character drop a gun when he’s done with it. Or she. One can only guess what’s going through their head: “Well, looks like the immediate danger is gone so I might as well get rid of my only line of defense!”

How many times have we seen someone drop a gun when they’re done with it? In horror movies, it’s pretty common for someone to drop a fully loaded weapon after the immediate threat has been taken care of. It’s maybe slightly more logical to drop an empty weapon – that is, assuming, that there are no bullets left in the world. Because a gun is like a car – as long as it has fuel (bullets) it will work. If it runs out of fuel (bullets) all you need to do is refill it.

This applies to all sorts of supplies, especially in an apocalyptic scenario. Not to harp too much on the mediocre The Walking Dead, but in the most recent episode the resident cool guy shoots off a one-liner then fires an arrow from his crossbow while walking off-screen. Badass? I guess. Good practice during the apocalypse? Nope! Unless he has an arrow factory in his back pocket. You can’t just go around throwing your supplies away. After you do your cool little arrow trick, you walk over and pull it out. Then you head back to the highway and gather up all the water, food, and medicinal supplies that you can.

All of this is about preserving what you already have – well, except for that last line. That’s about getting new stuff – which is what this paragraph is about. Remember, we’re talking about facing alarming odds. Thousands of zombies. Hundreds of vampires. A dozen werewolves. A hundred evil aliens. You’re going to need lots of weapons and lots of ammo – so get it.

Sometimes a zombie movie will show our heroes gather up a few guns, but if you look at an action movie or a sci-fi flick, how many guns and ammo caches are left behind? If you’re stumbling around the dark with a pistol, then you shoot a Russian mobster who has an AK-74, you don’t keep walking down the hallway – you grab the AK-74. Now you have more bullets and a second gun! If you’re fighting hillbillies in the wood, after you crush one to death with a well-planned rock slide, you take his machete and his shotgun!

In my memory, I can only recall one movie really showing someone gathering up weapons – Alien: Resurrection. One of the characters heads down a hallway to pick up an abandoned assault rifle – smart thinking! Although in this specific instance, he dies shortly thereafter, without getting a chance to use it. But more often than not, it’s a good move to acquire more supplies, weapons, and bullets. When you see a gun, grab it! If you don’t, someone else will.

All of this speaks to the idea of planning for the future. In movies, how often is there more of a threat to contend with after the immediate threat is handled? Like 9 out of 10 times, that’s how often. Masked killers pop back up, accomplices appear out of nowhere – danger is everywhere, always. Be prepared. I know I would be, so that’s why when I see characters waste ammo, drop guns, or fail to pick up new ones, I go past my boiling point.

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As a dyed in the wool horror fan (blood red), I’m not afraid to say that The Walking Dead on AMC is tremendously boring, not good horror, not good zombie action, and not even close to being a good adaptation. To fans of the graphic novels, what’s transpiring on the screen is bordering on being offensive.

AMC has made a lot of great television, but this ain’t it.

Right now you’re mad. You’re mad because you love this show. You love this show because you probably can’t stomach too much horror, but you like Mad Men so you gave this a chance and Wow! Cool! Zombies! Zombies are cool and they’re horror. So much more legitimate than Twilight!

Well I’m glad you’re watching horror. That’s why I still watch The Walking Dead. I want there to be lots of horror on TV because that’s awesome. Right now, it’s not great horror, but maybe this will pave the way for some. But still, I haven’t convinced you yet that The Walking Dead sucks – and I probably won’t.

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, though.

The cardinal sin of this TV series is they abandoned the source material – and fast. The comics are tremendous. When I first discovered them there were already about 12 issues out and I devoured every single one like a zombie at a brain platter. I’ve read the bulk of them and own the rest and just haven’t gotten to them yet. They’re fantastic and heartbreaking. Really, the series almost makes you want to stop reading. There is no happy ending – ever. There is barely a happy middle ever. Bad things happen to people. Always. Most of the sacred cows have already been bled out.

The Walking Dead on TV pales in comparison. The first six issues cover basically the arc of Season One and are collected in a trade paperback entitled “Days Gone By.” The end of that arc is amazing. It’s a moment I waited all of Season One for and it never showed up. I hoped it would show up in the first episode of Season Two. I don’t know when it’s coming, if ever, and that is fucking bullshit. It’s one of the defining moments of the comic series. It’s the defining moment of the first arc, for sure.

Instead of an amazing, powerful and emotional ending like the comics, how did Season One end? With the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, activating a self-destruct sequence that blew up the entire building and sent fireballs chasing our heroes. Bullshit. Firstly, the fireballs looked like shit, secondly, while there are undoubtedly dozens of safeguards at the CDC, I guarantee you none of them involve blowing up the entire building and causing damage to the surrounding civilian population.

I’d list more problems with Season One, but it was entirely forgettable. I mean, I definitely remember the introduction of two racist redneck characters that aren’t anywhere in the books, but when you’re aiming for cheap emotion nothing hits home harder than white on black hate.

In the premiere episode of Season Two, I had a few problems – The show starts with a long, boring narration from Rick to his long lost buddy. Poorly written and poorly delivered in front of a green screen. Moving on.

Question – why do regular dead people look like zombies? I mean, they have literally the exact same make-up. Or are we to believe that regular zombies just also drop dead in different areas? Isn’t a dead zombie an oxymoron unless its brain has been removed? There is one particular corpse in this episode who is clutching a pristine set of Bear Grylls survival knives that looks exactly like one of the walking dead.

Speaking of product placement – this episode was bad. At one point our crew turns on the still working radio of a pretty Hyundai before we get an interstitial ad that says “Brought to you by Hyundai,” but that’s okay – plenty of shows these days make a big deal about cars, but The Walking Dead does it one better by making a big deal out of survival knives!

Little Carl Grimes finds the entire Bear Grylls by Gerber collection on a corpse, takes it back to the group and everyone is happy! Then everyone is given a Bear Grylls survival weapon! They then kill zombies with them or stare at them like they’re fucking awesome! That’s after everyone got to pick their own when the entire set was laid out across the hood of a car. GERBER. GERBER. BEAR GRYLLS. I wonder if they’re available in the AMC store yet? I checked Amazon and couldn’t find the complete set, but you too can own the Bear Grylls survival knife or the Bear Grylls survival hatchet or the Bear Grylls survival parang as carried by Lori!

The characters themselves are obviously retarded as well. While on watch duty, standing on top of the RV with a great view, the old man Dale lets about 100 zombies creep up on them, like right on top of them. Then, they do the only logical thing – hide under cars! Wait, what? Why would you hide under cars? Almost all of the cars are unlocked – also, there are open trucks and the RV right there. Why hide in the one place where a zombie could actually just reach out and grab you? Dumb.

Speaking of dumb, both Dale and Shane refuse to give Andrea the gun she owns and brought with her, despite Shane offering to show her how to clean it and calling it a “good piece” even though it’s “low capacity.” If you insist everyone has a weapon one moment, why not give her a gun? Why not give her her own gun? If some asshole during the Apocalypse wouldn’t give me my own gun back, I’d cut his throat that very night with my Bear Grylls Survival Parang.

Perhaps my biggest chuckle was when Lori, looking at all the dead people in their cars, says that she’s uncomfortable about looting supplies because “this feels like a graveyard.” Um, the entire fucking world is a graveyard and you’ve been living in it for like six months. You are tired, starving, dehydrated, and low on supplies – yet you feel bad taking shit out of abandoned cars? Fuck you, Lori. Fuck you.

I didn’t take note of the many instances of a character describing what was happening – like when he can’t shoot a zombie because the noise will attract other zombies or something similar. We’re not dumb, but I guess actually most of the party members are, so this might make sense that Rick has to spell most things out to these dumbasses.

All in all, I find The Walking Dead on AMC to be an emotionless exercise that is cool because zombies are on TV, but ultimately boring and repetitive. It’s truly a shame, because the comics are fantastic and deserved a literal Watchmen style adaptation. Every time I watch this series, I rage at how good the show could have been if they just stuck to the comics and go past my boiling point.

Slice through more Boiling Point with your Official Bear Grylls Survival Parang As Railed Against By Fure

Monster movies have a special place in any horror fan’s heart. Whether you’re a fan of giant mutated ants, hybrid beasts, strange aliens, or any crazy old weird thing someone dreamed up that crawled out of a swamp and raped a cheerleader, monsters are awesome. The bigger, badder, and bloodier the better.

It seemed for years that even if you weren’t looking for a monster, one would come out of the darkness and tear your face off. Nowadays, you’re hard pressed to get your shit packed in by a mythical beast even if you go defecating on Native American burial grounds.

Yes, of course some monster movies have come out in the last few years – even a few of them were big time movies. But overall, finding a true monster movie has been difficult and finding a good one has been nearly impossible. Defining a monster movie can be difficult, but let’s be clear – I don’t count vampires or zombies or Twilight werewolves. When I say monster, I don’t mean a mutated human a la I Am Legend, I mean a mutated human a la C.H.U.D. or a hybrid beast like in The Relic. Something animalistic with almost nothing relatable.

Theatrically speaking, the monster movies that come to mind over the last three or so years include Cloverfield, Piranha 3D, and Super 8. Yeah, two J.J. Abrams films, one that barely showed the monster and another that just made that same monster a lot smaller and showed him a few more times. Piranha 3D I guess counts, though that’s more of a monster sub-division since they’re just uglier, larger piranhas.

If you switch over to SyFy Channel, you get the great joy of watching shitty movies about MegaPythons, Wyverns, or MegaSharks and Sharktopusses. These are monstrous animals, and I’ll use them here because there aren’t a lot of examples of monster movies.

Expand to the DVD market and you find some good monster movies, like 2008′s Splinter or 2007′s Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, some okay ones like the Feast franchise or Outlander, and plenty of bad ones like Hyenas. Include foreign films that you later get from Netflix and you’ll find stuff like Monsters or Troll Hunter.

Sure, I’ve come up with a few titles to talk about – and most of them suck or are barely monster movies. Where are the cool ones?

I mentioned a few good ones earlier, and now I return to you with such enjoyable films as The Howling, Monster Squad, The Blob, Pitch Black, Basket Case, Tremors, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Host, Gremlins, Critters, Pumpkinhead or any number of others.

Monsters are cool. Monsters should be on the big screen. Again, if Hollywood only really cares about money, take a look at how much money can be generated when a monster movie gets good word of mouth like The Host or any of the other foreign films that gained a lot of traction. These movies don’t cost a lot to make and people want to see them. Monsters fascinate us. They can represent our greatest mistakes or just pure evil. There is no need to feel sorry for the monster – you can kill the fuck out of it for shits and giggles and just have a damn good time.

I personally love monsters – the creativity of the design, the mythology and backstory. When I find a cool looking monster toy or statue, I snap it up. If only there was some way to see these things on the big screen again.

So where are the monster movies? Where are the malicious, mean, killer monsters? The blind, ravenous pre-Cambrian worms or the swamp creature who lusts for women? Let’s move away from humans as monsters and boring ass, cliched, obvious allusions to our humanity and whatever other bullshit the zombie and vampire movies are trying to push on us.

Give me a big ass monster that is killing people because people fucking taste good. And when you make that movie, Hollywood, release it in October. Every time I go hunting for a monster movie, either I come up short or it does – and that’s pushing me past my boiling point.

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People love Halloween, they love scary movies, and they love combining the two. During the month of October, more people than ever are interested in seeing scary flicks and having fun in a theater. You can look at positively mediocre movies, like most of the Saw franchise, Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies, and Paranormal Activity, that are released in October and make oodles of money — money they wouldn’t make at any other time.

It’s sort of like when poker started appearing on television, everyone started buying poker sets. Poker movies started coming out. SyFy Channel and The Asylum make a living off of making rip-off movies that play around the release of huge movies, when people are most interested in that subject. If only there were a way to know when people would be interested in what…

Oh wait, it’s called a fucking calendar. Halloween happens every fucking year and every year people want to watch horror movies. It’s not rocket science. It’s not even science. It’s common sense.

You’d think that after 40 years of making slasher films, Hollywood would have an idea that releasing them around Halloween might be cool. So let’s see what 40 years of experience has given us this October in terms of horror releases.

• The Thing
• Trespass (not actually a horror movie, but it’s almost kind of close)
• Red State (just Kidding, you can buy the DVD)
• Human Centipede II (only if you were in Austin in September)
• Paranormal Activity 3

So really, if you want to watch a horror movie in a movie theater in October, you either have to find a cool joint showing old movies, settle for a home invasion movie, check out a remake or watch a sequel. How does this make sense?

Why are there no horror movies in theaters right now? It’s Halloween time! I mean, there are literally businesses that open for two months a year, every year, just to capitalize on people’s love of Halloween. Candy companies pop huge Easter/Christmas-killer boners and sell specialty chocolates. Thrift stores change their signs to to advertise themselves as Costume Superstores!

I wouldn’t be surprised if Pizza Hut offered a pumpkin shaped pizza – and I’d sure as fuck buy one, because I love Halloween. I love Pumpkin Milkshakes, black and orange tortilla chips, and spooky cheap-ass gritty candy, because I love horror and everything around it.

Hollywood, you want my money? TAKE IT. I am throwing it away all over the place every October to satisfy my horror cravings. You are the one I want most, baby. You’re the one for me. I just want a few good nights this month. Can’t I just get a new horror movie every week in October? Can’t I get something special, scary, full of tits and blood? We used to be happy.

We were happy in January. Or February. When for some reason you released all the horror movies. You forgot my birthday and our anniversary, Hollywood, and I think we’re going to break up this time. You’re insensitive, bad with timing, and you don’t know me. You don’t know what I want or how to give it to me, or even when.

You’re a terrible girlfriend, Hollywood, and you’re stupid. Too stupid to make money hand over bloody stump. I don’t buy Christmas trees in July and I don’t see beach movies in December. You’re not completely blind to the idea of timely releasing – so why do you fail so badly every October?

In pure return on investment, horror films are amazing. You can triple that amount just by releasing it in October or the first week of November. Wise up, assholes, because while I love horror movies, Halloween, and October in general, every year you push me past my boiling point.

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And it was good. I could decide to see a movie on say, Thursday, buy tickets for Friday night, show up 5 minutes before the film started and have a good time. It became the only way to see movies for me. No getting to the theater early to stand in line to make sure I got good seats. I could just buy them early. All it took was a little forethought.

In fact it was such a good idea and became so popular in LA that a lot of our theaters are reserved seating. And that’s kind of a bad thing.

I know what you’re thinking – but Robert, I order my seats online and it is indeed awesome! I agree, for the most part, or I did. I’m definitely the kind of guy who thinks ahead about what movie I want to see. I know what’s coming out when and I like to see things on Friday nights, so I often order tickets and see movies opening night.

However, lately, maybe blame it on the economy, I’ve been going to more matinees and hitting up different theaters with lower prices and at a moments notice. The moments notice part is where I’m starting to see that reserved seating is kind of bullshit.

I mean, pretty much everyone has the internet now and can order tickets online, so it’s not like it’s unfair, everyone can do it. But when you’re walking around a mall or cruising past a theater, it is ten times harder to just swing by and catch a movie.

Case in point – I decided to catch a screening of Drive when I was walking through a local shopping center. In this increasingly automated and reserved world, I stepped up to the kiosk and saw that many of the seats were already sold, but there were a couple of good ones left. I tapped them – then the screen kicks me back, having just sold those seats to someone else. Now, because of the automated system, there are only a few single seats in the theater, so me and my guest have been boxed out. Living up to my surname (pronounced fury) I punched the screen in frustration. Oops.

All the people who thought ahead and ordered their tickets online and decided to show up five minutes before the screening beat me out, the guy who was actually standing in the theater thirty minutes before the show was set to begin. There is something wrong about that.

Reserved seating has killed the spontaneous movie going experience. I mean, if you maybe have your phone with you or you’re sitting at home on the computer and you decide to see a movie, you’re probably in good shape. But if you’re cruising around, having a day on the town, your odds of getting a good seat in Los Angeles are pretty shitty.

I’m not sure what the situation is like outside of Los Angeles, so this might be a very localized gripe. The few times I’ve seen movies outside of LA lately it hasn’t been a problem, but I’d guess big cities should be on the look-out for the reserved seating craze to sweep there way soon.

This is definitely not just a first world problem, it’s a big city first world problem, the weakest kind to be upset about – but I’m easily angered.

So what…Why… How… I mean, I like being able to order my tickets and show up at the last minute. That’s definitely cool. But when every option is the same, I feel like I’ve been robbed of the ability to just snag some tickets and pop in and grab good seats. Big releases have tested the support of fans and their willingness to camp out, buy tickets, and wait in line for days – but this can’t really happen in LA anymore, it’s a race to click your mouse button.

I’d be interested in hearing if reserved seating has come to your area and if it has, if you’ve ever run into a problem with. I was happy as nuts with reserved seating for five years, but now that it has spread to all of my local theaters, I’m starting to see the downside. Why must everything going digital? Why is the simple joy of just walking up and buying tickets being sold off early and online? I’ll tell you, I’m still going to buy my tickets online most of the time, but every day I do, I’ll go a little bit past my boiling point.

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