SHIT I BORROWED FROM PEOPLE - Remote Control (1988)

Being in a house where the walls are covered in DVD's may seem like a entertainment wonderland, but have you ever tried to make a quick decision on something to watch with all those options? It's bullshit!
Sometimes I just want someone to throw a bluray in my face and say "Watch THIS!".

Such is the case (pun intended) with Jeff Liebermans "Remote Control".
Recently, JL posted a thingy on facebook about how the stock levels of his collectors edition DVD and Blurays of the film were dwindling and to get in before you had to deal with all those Ebay pigfuckers shilling their way to financial glory.

Shamefully, I didn't have any money to grab myself a copy at the time (sorry Jeff). With the current conversion rate of American to Australian Dollars, it makes it pretty cost prohibitive to buy too much from the US these days. Plus, I had never seen Remote Control before, so I was also hesitant on laying down the dosh on something I had no real idea about.

A good ol buddy of mine however, had seen the film on TV back in the good old days, and has always expressed fond memories of it. He has been wanting to show it to me for ages, but has never been able to acquire a copy on video to show it to me. Imagine his surprise when he found out about the bluray being available. Needless to say, he just threw his money at it.

So after a couple of weeks and a strong recommendation after a viewing, my friend threw it to me, said: "Catch, motherfucker," and I took it home to view with my other half.

For those not in the know, the basic story is a guy called Cosmo (Kevin Dillon) who works in a video store with his pal Georgie (Christopher Wynne). Recently, they've been hiring out to the local populous a video named: "Remote Control" which everyone seems to be going nuts over. What seems like a cheesy sci-fi film made in the 50's actually winds up being a deadly mind control device that turns people into crazed mutant maniacs.

That really just explains the first couple of minutes of the film.

It's wonderful, because the film was made in the 80's and is obviously a throwback to the sci-fi films of yesteryear, but at the same time when I watch it now it has the merit of having a great 80's vibe whilst maintaining that distinctive 50's scent.
I don't really know how much I can say about the film itself. It gets me the same way other films from the era do, with heavy waves of nostalgia, not just for the era the film was set in, but with the whole video store aspect as well.
I get a really warm feeling seeing a video store packed full of people; it's a sight I haven't seen in a long long time.

However, upon the first viewing, I had a small complaint.
This was in regards to what seemed to be large chunks being sliced out of the film. It was glaringly obvious to me when I watched it. I mean, I looked away for a minute and the whole plot progressed a bunch. I was left feeling that I had maybe fallen asleep for ten minutes of the film (which has been known to happen - but not in this case).
Talking to the friend who lent me the film about this issue, he threw a rebuttal in my face that left me without speech (temporarily). He just said "But that was one of the great things about it!".

With this friend, I told him that the main reason that Maniac Cop 2 was better than the first (SPOILERS) was because they killed Bruce Campbell and set the excess baggage he brought to the film free. He said something along the lines of: "I can't enjoy the film because they killed off the best thing about it with no sense, no glory, no nothing." I personally think a katana to the throat is a glorious way to bite the dust. But I replied with: "That was the best thing they could have done, it was the only way it could have happened, and that's what made the film great!" I THRUST the new bluray in his gob, and said: "Watch it AGAIN!!! You son. of. a. bitch." I'm surprised he didn't return it a charred lump.

ANYWAY!!! He made me realise something that I generally use as a rule for every film that I watch, and that is for films of this calibre, to ignore shit like that. The film is fun, weird, energetic, nostalgic, violent (but not outrageous), exciting, and outside of the box so to speak.

So in conclusion, Mr Lieberman, I have purchased the DVD from you regardless of the USD to AUD conversion rate, because it fucking rocked. And I like it more and more the more I think about it.

If there are still some copies of the bluray or dvd left and you want to grab it (and you fucking well should) go to this link: http://www.jeffliebermandirector.com/

And finally - Jennifer Tilly... just because...

TGIF: AKA - Fridays Curse!!!

That's right folks...it's Friday again.
And what a Friday it is!

In sunny, hot, humid, smelly, heat filled, satanfire (spelling?) Perth, Western Australia, there isn't really a whole lot to do. Actually, rather, there isn't a whole lot you WANT to do.
The best thing you can do for yourself right now is to go and find somewhere that has 1: An Air Conditioner, 2: A watery place, or 3: A large walk in freezer.

You insane clubbers can get hot on the dancefloor, but the rest of us will laugh at your poor shrivelled body lying there all seized up from heat exhaustion. If you choose to club it up, keep hydrated, and I don't mean hydrated with UDL's (do they still do those? it's been a while since my drinks were determined by my wage and social status).

Here are a few options for your coming Friday:

Dinner and a Movie (Maccas and Deadpool)

Deadpool is out, and while I have shamefully not been to see it yet, all 15 year olds are saying: "It's Dope!"
While I have suffered through Marvel pretty much chewing the character up and spitting him out in the comics for the last few years, everyone who has ever fell in love with the character, for however short amount of time KNOWS that Ryan Reynolds is the man for the job, and the money it's raking in makes me feel really happy for Tim Miller, Ryan Reynolds, and yes I'm even happy for Rob Liefeld. So take your partner out for some tasty Macdonalds, and then go see Deadpool.
Other Films out at the minute include 2oolander (which I personally thought was fucking hilarious), Sisters (also very very funny), The Hateful Eight (Tarantinos best film since Jackie Brown) and of course - Star Wars. Just go see Star Wars again, too many times is not enough times.

Porky's BBQ in Northbridge:

Do you like BBQ?
Do you like Meat?
Do you like American style BBQ Meat?
Fucking go to Porky's this Friday, buy yourself some various assorted meats and get the meatsweats. The quality is above par for Perth BBQ, and the vibe is pretty laid back and chillaxed, so don't go in and expect foie gras, these guys would probably just slap you silly with a rack of ribs. Seriously though, Meat.

MOVIE NIGHT!!!

Well if you don't have work the next day, how about getting a bunch of fellows around for a few thematically similar films? Here are a few suggestions:

Movie night Suggestion ONE:

Alien, Galaxy of Terror, Forbidden World.

Three brilliant films, each subsequent film declining in quality and originality. Kicking off with Alien in all its terrifying glory, middling with Galaxy of Terror which plays on the idea of exploring a derelict structure full of nasty shit (you can also see where James Cameron got his idea for Aliens in some respects) and finishing with Forbidden World, which is basically a drawn out version of the last ten minutes of Alien. Your friends will most certainly be asking you why you even bothered with the last two, as they were both done better in one film.

Movie Night Suggestion TWO:

Raw Force, Empire of The Ants.

Just the two films in this one. Mainly because it will either evoke hours of discussion afterwards or cause your friends to leave your house and never darken your doorstep again.
Let me try and explain Raw Force...
A bunch of buggers on a boat (including a couple of guys from the local Karate club) all embark on a cruise skippered by Cameron Mitchell, which is bound for an old island. On this island (unbeknownst to the cruisers) dwell a tribe of cannibal monks who eat sexy women and resurrect ninja zombies. The tribe currently have a good thing going with a couple of petty crooks where they trade jade rocks from the island for the sexy women for the cannibals to eat/sacrifice.
The cruise ship sinks and everyone has to fight for their life.

Why put this in a double with Empire of the Ants? Its basically the same film, but instead of cannibal monks, its giant ants. It has a bunch of people with questionable morals and talents and pits them together against a practically unimaginable foe. In both films you have the same kinds of characters. Watch it and see!

Movie Night Suggestion THREE:

Red Dawn, Point Break, Roadhouse.

A Patrick Swayze triple dipple fun time.
TOO OFTEN do I hear people talking about "Oh Patrick Swayze? fuckin Dirty Dancing and shit, fuckin hate chick flicks."
Well, this triple feature is the perfect way to fuck those idiots in the ass. Not just three great Swayze films, just THREE FLAT OUT SUPERB OUTSTANDING ACTION FILMS.
Just three fucking awesome movies. And in each one of them, Swayze beats the living shit out of someone. It's also a great chance to get those guys who don't get the Family Guy Roadhouse reference on board with life in general. My life didn't fully kick into gear until I saw Roadhouse.
One another note, for all you closet homosexuals parading around as manly men who refuse to watch chick flicks because you are too terrified to admit to enjoying them because you are fighting an internal battle about your sexual identity, well I will have you know that Dirty Dancing and Ghost are both amazing films in their own right and deserve much more than what you give to it. So fuck you.

Sigh. Anyway, there's a couple of ideas for your Friday night. Enjoy it, and the weekend that follows it. And remember:

So I Watched It 57 Times - What's it to you?

When I was a kid, I loved Starship Troopers.

I lived and breathed that shit.
In High School I had to write an essay in an exam about my hero, knowing full well that my hero was not my Dad, or Einstein, or Captain Cook but was actually Ash from Evil Dead II; I proceeded to write about him. That was until my oldest and dearest friend Kirk who was sat in front of me during said exam wrote "I did mine about Ash" on his hand and showed it to me. In a fit of red rage, I screwed up the half page I had written about Ash and started writing one about Sugar Watkins and his sacrifice for the rest of Rico's Roughnecks...
True Story.
I've seen it probably more times than any other movie, I've seen it more times than Evil Dead II (although its a close one) and I've seen it more times that Highlander II or Star Trek V.

"Excuse me...how can there be two people on this planet who would consider Ash from Evil Dead their hero? Oh, you were 13? That explains it..."

As a kid, with an abundance of spare time (school finished at 3pm for fuck sake, and homework was for squids) I had the opportunity to watch Starship Troopers literally every day. My stepdad would come home and before even saying hello, would say "H---What? This fucking movie again? How many fucking times do you have to watch this fucking movie? Every fucking day this week I've come home to you watching this! Go outside! Be a kid! Stop wasting your fucking life watching this movie!"
It eventually evolved into him coming home, grunting and walking past the television, and finally, coming home and ignoring it completely.
I - without exaggeration - would say I watched this movie twice a week, maybe three times a week between the ages of 12 and 16. If I was half way through the film and had to stop it, I'd just start it from scratch the next day.
Years later at the dinner table I got made the butt of a little joke (I was not put out in any way folks, as dinner was generally a time to ridicule eachother).
The joke was basically about how many times I had seen Starship Troopers, it wasn't really a joke as much as it was "Hey, Jake, how many times have you seen that stupid movie with all the tits? are we at the 1000 mark yet - hyuck hyuck!"

Hyuck Hyuck. I slammed back with "I've seen it almost as many times as you've seen Stripes."
He shut up and never made fun of me again about it.

We - normally as a family - had to sit down and watch Stripes EVERY TIME IT WAS ON TV. Every fucking time. Now I love me some Stripes, it is an awesome movie, but if I'm in the other room reading, or wanking, or drawing, I don't want to come out and watch Stripes for the 500th time. Even these days if my wife has it on or wants to watch it, I'll have a PTSD moment and stare at her (through her) for a few minutes hearing Bill Murray saying "Uncle Hulka" in my head over and over and over and over and over and....

I digress...

The point is, my stepdad was allowed this little addiction to this movie. It was - and is - his all time favourite film.
Crazily enough, as many times as I have seen Starship Troopers, it isn't even my favourite film. It would probably scrape into my top 30 by a very small victory. But I judge my top 10, 20, 30, 50 whatever by how I feel after the nth viewing. Evil Dead II will never be taken off the top of my list because every single fucking time I watch it, I feel like I've watched it for the first time. Every single thing I like about movies is in that film. I don't pick something new up every time I watch it, I don't feel differently after every consecutive viewing; I feel the same as I did when I first saw it. Nowadays I limit my viewings of it so that I can properly soak in that feeling of excitement, nostalgia, and love I have for that particular film.
When I meet someone who says: "I love Evil Dead II!" I hesitate to reply, and think to myself - fuck you, you can't love Evil Dead II like I do - before snapping out of it and making a lifelong friend.

It's a thing among film buffs that the AMG's (average movie goers) can't seem to appreciate. We filmfreaks watch movies a lot. We can tend to watch the same movie a lot. My wife has seen 1408 with Cusack/Jackson more times that even she would probably like to admit. I've seen Starship Troopers, Total Recall, Conan The Barbarian, Highlander II, Aliens, and Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man a SHAMEFUL amount of times. The other morning, I sat down to absorb Fulci's Four of the Apocalypse for the first time, and it was so great, so outstanding, that I woke my wife up and made her watch with me it no less than twenty minutes after the first viewing.

The burning question is: IS IT A WASTE OF TIME TO WATCH THE SAME MOVIE OVER AND OVER AGAIN?

Well I guess to answer that question, we have to do what I did with my stepdad and throw a comparison back in the inquisitors face.

Say you like Golf.

You go to the Golf place, hit your little white balls and four hours or more later you have a score.
You come home and your partner asks "How was Golf, Jerry?"
You reply: "It was sublime, Chantal, I hit that sweet motherfucker right down the goddamn fairway until it stopped, then I hit it three more times and eventually got it in the hole. Then I went to the second hole and you know what? I slammed that little fucker again, and kept doing it until finally...I came...home."

Outside of the obvious impotence symbolism associated with this conversation, I GUARANTEE you that the conversation remains the same, albeit with a few minor differences (one day Jerry gets a good score, one day Jerry gets a bad score).

"Sorry Jerry, today just wasn't your day. Better luck next time...No seriously, sorry to hear that you were shit today."

Tonight I will be seeing Predator on the big screen. It's a pretty big deal. It's another film I've seen a million times, on VHS, on DVD, on BLURAY, and now I'm seeing it AT THE MOVIES. It's a totally fresh way to re-visit one of my all time favourite films.

I'll get home afterwards, and my wife (who unfortunately can't make it) will say: "Hey Jake, how was the movie?"
And I will say: "It was sublime, Tiff. I never realised that it could be better than the last time I watched it, but secretly I think I had an inkling."
But in reality it will be more like "Fucking awesome, just fucking awesome. It was fucking awesome. I came all over the back of the chair in front of me."

It's the same shit. Its like if some asshole goes on about how much money you waste on buying DVD's when they down five pints at 10 bucks a pop down at the local every night.
A pint - and a pint is good - lasts ten minutes for me, maybe less.
A DVD will last as long as I decide, I've watched the same DVD copy of Cobra so many fucking times I don't know how my player still reads the disc. I get the enjoyment out of it again and again.

You have your passions, whether it be Golfing, Boozing, Kayaking, Womanizing, Ping Ponging, Socializing, whatever. Maybe your house has a strange sculpture chosen by your interior designer in the middle of a table in the middle of a white room in the middle of your apartment in the middle of the city. Maybe that's your style.

Well my passion is for film. I buy DVD's, and Blurays and Videos. I have them all in my lounge-room covering the bland white walls. I have action figures, statues, knick knacks, posters, all kinds of shit adorning my walls. Because I fucking love it. It's awesome. When people come to visit our house they are fascinated to the point of ridiculing us because they can't comprehend why someone would blow their pay on all of this shit, when they could go to Bali and buy their entire catalogue of entertainment for the price of a West Australian dinner.
So have I answered the burning question? It's somewhat of a stalemate. I sincerely do not believe that is a waste of time to watch the same film a ridiculous amount of times. But Jerry the Golfer would probably say "Of course it is you goddamn slacker! Come out to the Golfplace with me, I'll show you a hard days work!"
But here's me saying golf is a waste of precious land, and that it is a very dull and non engaging sport.

Look, at the end of the day it's all good, you can play your game of Golf, I'll go watch Four of The Apocalypse again. There really isn't an issue either way.

But deeeeeeeeeeeep deep down, there is an issue, isn't there?

The Hours Are Dropping Like Flies

Take a minute if you will, and walk a mile in my shoes...
It's Monday night...
Work is over. You have battled the hordes of customers with your verbal hammer and sent them back from whence they came where hopefully they shall remain (in other words, you have just taken 7.6 hours worth of berating by strangers who are obviously better than you in every conceivable way).

The drive home is traffic laden, but Tangerine Dream fills the air and you are in no state to really give a shit. Hey, you can't change the traffic right? You KNOW that it will be quicker to get out and walk, but leaving your car behind is not only counter-productive and an expensive exercise, but stupid and compulsive.
But the sweet tunes lull you into a small dark space where you can sit and think about the day and rejoice in the fact that you only have a short distance to go until the days dirty scum can be scrubbed off your skin.

The next two days are work-free. You don't have to consider work. You don't have to live through the mistakes you may have made during the last week at work. That can wait until Thursday, where the ritual torture begins anew.

What is on the agenda for tonight? Home by six thirty at this rate, home sweet home. Home, where you can put my feet up and relax. Home, where you can watch a few episodes of Star Trek DS9 and then maybe ingest an old Italian mockbuster or two (or three).

Cut to Wednesday night...

Those few episodes turned into a few seasons, the Italian mockbusters turned into an all weekend  marathon, and you suddenly realised that:

1: The dishes are a mile high (not really an exaggeration)
2: The bird has left seed husks all through the house, your hair, the kitchen sink, the laundry, fucking everywhere.
3: The gardens look like satans armpit
4: The lawns looks like satans armpit too
5: The bedroom looks like someone let a homeless person in and rifle through the place,
6: My armpits smell like satans armpits,
7: The rubbish bin is filled to the top with no sign of stopping,
8: You are in your underpants because washing clothes hasn't been a priority lately,
9: Your teeth are hairy,
10: Your wife's teeth are also hairy.

Sure is quite the Wednesday night predicament you're in hey?

The truth of the matter is that it isn't a predicament. IT ISN'T.

There is a bad smell in the air (not my armpits) when it comes to what is expected of us on a daily basis. Do we spend our time cleaning, cleaning, and re-cleaning to the point of living in hospital grade cleanliness? Or do we rough it for a couple of days to ensure that those precious few hours after work and on the weekend (whatever two days your weekend or days off may be) are spent enjoying our lives with people that we want to enjoy our lives with?
Hey I'm not knocking all you clean freaks out there; if that's your deal, then shit son, that's your deal.
My house remains clean to live in, I'm not like this crazy bitch:




"This my lovely kitchen"

Oh we will clean the fuck out of the place when necessary. But it wont get in the way of ME TIME.

What is ME TIME is totally subjective to the individual.

Your idea of ME TIME may be to take a nice stroll through the everglades, outside of regular human contact, only to stop to smell a pretty flower - this is great, wonderful use of ME TIME.

Another example of ME TIME may be scrubbing the walls with a toothbrush to ensure that EVERY SINGLE LAST FUCKING SPOT IS SCRUBBED YOU SON OF A FUCK!!!!! Once again, great use of your time if that's what makes you happy.

My idea of ME TIME, is what I will now dub here WE TIME.

WE TIME is very very rare. WE TIME is based around the idea that two people meet, and their ideas of ME TIME are the same thing. Example:

Boy likes to do nothing and watch Henry Silva beat the shit (verbally and physically) out of young Italian upstarts.

Girl likes to do nothing and watch Franco Nero slap his way from one side of the city to the other. Also likes popcorn.

Boy meets girl, they fall in love, they bond over individual ME TIMES and create WE TIME, amalgamating without fuss and creating a fantastic time to be had. Also, the popcorn worms its way in to the situation and henceforth we have a BONUS ADDED.

WE TIME is so fucking precious, and so fucking rare. And the beauty of WE TIME is that you can still always get ME TIME because you know that potentially it can develop into WE TIME.

I propose this to you: If you found someone to have WE TIME with...would you waste that time to clean your house?

FUCK NO - You would spend every goddamn waking moment with that person because YOU DESERVE IT!!! If you are lucky enough to get that, then you have it made. YOU HAVE IT MADE!!!

So I have someone I can spend WE TIME with...
I sometimes leave my house in disarray because WE TIME gets in the way.
So leave me the fuck alone, because my life is awesome.
If someone criticises you for not focusing your energy on stuff you can do later once your leisurely activities are complete, then tell them to leave you the fuck alone.