I was just lamenting the other day that I really don’t get to do enough drunk blogging anymore because I don’t really have the internet at my house.  But really that just stops me from drunk *posting* not drunk blogging.  So, the original intent of the Drunk Reviews tag was to both watch and review the movie while I was drunk I am going to make an exception tonight.  Because I am drunk and I already have 3 movies that I watched and need to blog about.  So at least one of them will be a drunk blog.  Holy shit that was wayyyy too much explanation.

On Sunday I was supposed to see that movie about Nazi zombies (does anyone else have trouble reaching the “z” on the keyboard?  It’s very uncomfortable) but instead I saw Up.  I really don’t like the title of this movie.  I want it to have an exclamation point or, something.  Another word, I guess.  The Fantastic Adventures of a Clinically Depressed Elderly Man and a Racially Ambiguous Child who Lacks a Father Figure might be good.  A little wordy, though.

I wasn’t head over heels for Up, but it is recognizably well done.  The animation specifically is very impressive.  Sure, the story (is it an allegory?  I’m going to have to google that) is charming in a Pixar-y way.  It’s impossible not to cheer on the protagonists, Carl and Russel, who are both adorable and earnest in their own ways.  The thing about the absent father I feel like has been Done to Death.  Sure it’s a problem that plagues America (I don’t even know if this is true, but I’m sure it must suck when this happens) but you can bet your sweet ass (WTF, why did I just say that?) that someone would have been up in arms if the kid (Russell) with an absent father had been African-American.  I mean, right?  Because then it would have been saying something about the irresponsibility of black men towards their children like that one time that Bill Cosby told black people to stop spending their money on sneakers.  Did my blog just suddenly get controversial?  Anyway, that just kind of annoyed me.  The missing dad part, not black people.  I actually don’t remember seeing any black characters in this movie, except at the very end.

What I did like was the really dumb talking Golden Retriever named Doug.  He was funny, even if his schtick got a little old.  I used to have a Golden Retriever.  She was really sweet but dumber than a brick.  Poor Claudia.

I was also kind of offput by how much littering happened in this movie, especially considering that WALL-E, Pixar’s last offering, was basically 90 minutes of “Don’t Litter” propaganda.  Russell and Carl go to the remote jungle, the whole point of it being that it is remote and secluded and “a land lost to time” and they just leave all kinds of shit everywhere.  They unload a whole house full of furniture right there on the jungle floor, they release all kinds of balloons into the atmosphere (also, come on guys, BALLOONS CAN’T LIFT A HOUSE!) and eventually (SPOILER!) they just leave a whole fucking house!  Right there at the top of a waterfall!  Maybe most kids aren’t going to take away any messages about littering in the rainforest from this movie, but it just seemed kind of weird to me.  Yes, this is actually something I thought about while watching Up.  No, I am not a dirty hippy.  It’s just weird, right?

The Last Picture Show is really beautiful – not just the cinematography which is clean and expressive, but the story and the characters are really made beautiful by their flaws.

There are also lots of boobs.

Something that struck me about the people in this movie is they are all very classic looking.  Even though, yes, that is Jeff Bridges, and that’s Randy Quaid and those are Cybill Shepherd’s tits, so maybe that’s why everything seems so familiar, but everyone in this movie seems to have very classic, timeless features.  They could have come from any decade and still wound up in movies or sprawled on chaises for Impressionists or something like that.

Random notes I made during my viewing:

Jacy (Shepherd) = JC = Jesus Christ?

Jacy has the same hair as Claire Danes in Shopgirl.  Hm.

Tall, Dark, Hottie: Are you a virgin?

Jacy: Guess I am

TDH: Too bad

Jacy: I don’t wanna be though!

TDH: I don’t blame you. Come and see me when you’re not.

Did you want to know what this movie is about?  Basically a shitty town in Texas in the 1950s and there are these 2 guy friends played by Timothy Bottoms and The Dude and both of them really want to fuck Cybill Shepherd, only one of them gets to and the other one has to settle for Cloris Leachman.  There is also a pool hall, a retarded kid, a hooker, a MILF, a naked swimming party, an alleged molestation and a movie theatre that (spoiler in the title!) shuts down eventually.

It’s great.

From what I gathered in my impaired state, a bunch of dudes, let’s call them the Six-Pack Spartans, need to go fight some other dudes, only there are way more of the other dudes.  But it’s OK because the Spartans all have six-packs and what seem to amount to magical shields and generally superhuman asskicking abilities.

The whole movie is a weird shade of brownish-gold.  And deeply crimson blood flies around in slow motion.  And there’s some guy who wears a bunch of jewelry who the Spartans hate (probably because he like asked them for blowjobs or something, I’m pretty sure that’s what happened).  There’s also a heavy-handed voiceover that explains *exactly* what is going on.  And one chick who is like queen or something.

I know I was drunk and all, but, this movie was really confusing and the plot seemed to only function to string together hyper-stylized fight scenes.  Lots of nice six-packs, though…I wish I could have gone to the wrap party for this movie.

Apparently he has been criticized for this before (I’ll find a link when I’m sober[here's one from amazon]) but, why is Christian Slater doing a Jack Nicholson impersonation? Seriously.

Ok no, but really guys, I really liked this movie a lot. It made me fall in love with Winona Ryder all over again (I don’t remember being in love with her for the first time – Beetlejuice, maybe?). It was maybe not the most *realistic* high school movie. Like, everyone that gets murdered dies really fast. Too fast. And everything is all color-coordinated in a very artificial way. It reminded me of Jawbreaker. Only Winona Ryder is a zillion times cooler than Rose McGowan (unless she has a machine gun for a leg).

What happened to the other ‘Heathers’ in this movie? Shannen Doherty was actually likable for the first part.

I bet that ‘Blazers with Shoulder Pads, Inc.’ saw a sharp decline in profits in 1990.

Here is some choice slang usage from this movie that I am going to try to adopt:

“That is so very.”

“What’s your damage?” (this was also in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (why hasn’t anyone made a Heathers TV show?))

Here’s my favorite quote:

After killing 2 football players:

Christian Slater/Jack Nicholson: Football season was over. They had nothing to offer the school but date rape and AIDS jokes.

I didn’t know date rape and AIDS jokes even existed in 1989! I have so much to learn.

I loved Heathers. It might even be a movie I’d like to own.

Hey man, the whole plot of Kids is pretty fucked up. Here’s my problem, so this girl Jenny (Chloe Sevigny‘s debut role) gets HIV from this totally immoral dude named Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick‘s debut – and pretty much the last thing he did worth mentioning). Jenny goes searching for him to tell him or yell at him or something. Eventually she finds him – while he’s having sex with another virgin. But, she doesn’t stop him! Maybe this is supposed to be realistic or something but as far as I can tell all it does is demonize Jenny for losing her virginity.  Well, maybe not for that specifc reason, but it definitely does demonize her when it seems like she’s kind of a victim.  Although, calling her a victim is kind of taking away her agency because it’s not like Telly raped her or anything.  So I don’t know, I’m torn about this. But still, why the fuck wouldn’t she STOP HIM??? Also, the conversations among the girls seem to imply to me that they have sex for pretty much every reason except for that they want to.  Except Rosario Dawson – she seems totally horny.

Basically, this movie is the quintessentially (that word is hard to spell while drunk) 90s indie flick. The style is so familiar – saturated and shaky and low-budget. It’s OK in general, but not that great. For a similar style and better characters and dialogue and such I guess I would recommend something like Buffalo ’66. Hey but it’s Rosario Dawson‘s first movie and she is pretty awesome. And what’s the deal with this Larry Clark guy? Look out for his next appearance on To Catch a Predator…

Oh, my final problem with this movie is that the soundtrack mixing was totally out of whack.  Like, I know it’s low budget and all, but I had to turn the TV up sooooo loud just to understand what the fuck these kids were saying but then the background noise, was like, deafening.  Is this really so hard?  To balance these things out? Oh yeah, and why are commercials so much louder than TV shows?  That is fucking annoying.