Nebraska

Movie: Nebraska
Drink: Coors Light power hour



     For those of you that don't know,  a Power Hour is when you take a shot of beer every minute for an hour.  I calculated it in my head and figured out that an entire power hour would only be 5 beers.  True, not a small amount of drinking in an hour, but let's be honest, nothing I haven't done before without even knowing it.   By Minute 21, I knew I was in trouble.  There was something about the marking of each passing minute with the celebratory shooting of alcohol that slipped each minute of my life straight down my throat, into my stomach and towards my rectum that made me start to panic and worry about my 401k and my inevitable trek towards my 40th birthday and the fact that I could slip on some ice during this endless winter and I haven't signed up for Obamacare yet.
      I now realize that this was the perfect frame of mind in which to watch Nebraska.   A slow moving film that is slow in the way that the river you are floating on with a 30 pack of beer in one of those floating cooler things is slow.   You don't mind.
     The fact that the movie was shot in black and white usually tells me that the movie was found to be pretty lame in the editing studio and the production team was too tired to fix anything and thought the lack of color would draw some of the attention away from how lame the plot line was.  When I think back through my Coors infested short term memory, however,  I can't really imagine this movie being filmed any other way.  I would like to say that the stark beauty of the struggle of life can only be truly captured without color, but let's be honest.  Old people and the Great Plains just look better in black and white.
    I watched it with 2 other people and we all had our own interpretations of the family.  We hated the mom, liked the mom, hated the son, understood the son, rooted for the dad.  All for different reasons.  It seemed that each person filtered the characters through their experiences with their own families, recognized someone and felt a flicker of... annoyance? Guilt? Love?  Who knows.  I will say that it ended up as an argument about who had the craziest cousins.  I'm happy, or sad, to report that I lost.
   As  I sat sank down in the couch with another Coors wedged in between the cushions,  I saw my mom in the mom,  my dad in the dad, myself in the son trying to fix everything.  I had a thousand regrets, a thousand good memories, and one or two resolutions to be a better person, a better son, a better brother.
     I just hope I can remember that in the morning.

Liberal Arts

Drink : One shot of moonshine


     I only watched about half of this movie, the kitchen was a mess and I was in the middle of cleaning it after a failed experiment where I try to figure out how to make an omelet that has more than 3 eggs in it.  Making a nice, hefty omelet always leads to burnt eggs and runny insides.  The only solution I came up with was to make 2 omelets.  Lots of egg and cooked onions gave their lives to my kitchen walls that day....
     The parts of this movie I did see were pretty neutral.  A story about a mid thirties dude who feels old while actual old people tell him he's not that old and how crappy everyone feels about aging is nothing new.  The characters spend a lot of time discussing books, which was amusing to me because I was just thinking about how I had gotten out of the habit of reading books before bed.  This movie makes me reluctant to take it back up.  Books are great, but if you  read them with even partial intent of telling others about how it made you feel, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Unlike movies, books play only in your mind and that version of the book cannot be seen by anyone else. It would be like watching The Dark Knight Rises, and then discussing it with someone who had seen Batman Forever and trying to find common ground.
     At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the main female character was really annoying.  Her never ending sarcasm and one-upping got old fast. Her sarcasm face was a blend of pained eyes with a puckered trying-not-to-laugh mouth. Women of the world: don't be like this chick. Girls that are constantly sarcastic are not cute, they are not fun, they are not ever going to find a boyfriend.  Guys do not want to be around a girl that, if they got a bad haircut and passed gas more, could be their little brother.  Less sass, more class, ladies.
    I never thought I'd say this, but Zach Efron saves this film.  He plays a somewhat cliche stoner/type guy who is always sitting on a park bench giving sage advice to the neurotic main character.  It works though.  And while watching, I discovered a very simple, very large difference between men and women.  Women are the selfish ones!  The girl spends the whole movie obsessing about herself and what her boyfriend thinks of her, while the boyfriend leaves to save a friend who calls and says he just swallowed a lot of pills.  While he's gone, she obsesses about what his absence means in relation to her. She yells at him for being selfish.  He wanders off, finds Zach Efron sipping water at his bench, and they discuss life and caterpillars and butterflies and how freaking incredible they are and how if something like that can happen, life can't really be all that bad. They are living in the moment, appreciating the universe. He goes back, and she is extra pissed because all she's been doing is thinking about herself and her little lame world.
    I think if women just stopped and thought about what an amazing planet they live on and how their feelings are a minute droplet in the bucket of the universe, their husbands/boyfriends would be a lot happier, and in return they would clean up the house more and make more money and put the toilet seat down.  Just a theory.
     However, if there is a woman out there, sarcastic, cool, greedy, whatever, that can make a six egg omelet, gimme a call.

Parental Guidance

Movie: Parental Guidance
Drink: Whatever was still in my system from New Year party



Never in my right mind would I see a movie like this in a theater, so you can imagine how awesome I felt as I lay on the carpet of my brother's house, slowly dripping 7UP into my mouth while dreaming of the #1 Extra Value meal at McDonald's, which cures everything. 
     As many of you know, the winter sun makes me want to pour acid on my eyes and then scribble the scabs black with a Sharpie before blindfolding myself while sitting in the basement, so when my brother suggested we go see a movie, all I heard was "popcorn and darkness".
     We were bringing the kids, so the only appropriate movie, yes I said appropriate ( I'm talking to you, dude who brought his 4 year old daughter to Terminator Salvation, disturbing me not with her crying at the blood and dismembering, but her giggling at them) was Parental Guidance.  And this is why we should all embrace our hangovers.  Normally I would've scoffed at the idea of paying money for what surely was a crap show, but in my mentally weakened state, I agreed to go. 
     Kids are great. I think we can all agree that babies totally suck, but once they pupate into a kid, they are like having a really funny, dweeby friend that thinks everything is cool.  I when I saw the pure joy in my niece's eyes as she pressed the red button that sprayed butter all over our popcorn I could relate.  What a fantastic invention!  When the movie got lame, it was no trouble at all to find a willing participant to go out to the lobby with me to get more pop and play the toy grabber machine.  People that usually glance warily at a grown man dumping quarters into a slot in an attempt to snag a greasy, star spangled dog/bear thing now came up to me and my nieces and smiled and cheered us on. When the movie got even more boring, I sat back and watched the secondary show of my brother trying to catch his daughter who just up and ran off.
      So all you parents, stop being so stressed and lame and take your kids to the movies. It doesn't even have to be animated.  Just make sure you drink heavily the night before.
     As for the movie itself, all I can say is not since "The Bride of Chucky" have I so badly wanted to see an ugly red headed brat get his ass kicked.

This is 40

The movie: This Is 40

The Drink: Agavales 100% agave tequila. In a flask I got for free from a giant gift pack of vodka

This is a great movie to see if you are single. It was not really that great, but it was highly informative. It was like a well done documentary on the earth's most boring animals. Now, I am not sure if all you married people with children are really constantly on edge, balanced precariously on tipping point between fights about really lame stuff, but it makes for good T.V.

The main characters were sad. Paul Rudd's usual charming dorkiness was replaced by middle class stress and emasculation. His wife is so incredibly annoying and obviously blazed on prescription meds, which is the only reason I can come up with to explain her slurred speech and slow, painfully confused way in which she goes about life.

After seeing this film, I totally understand the preoccupation that society has with post-apocalyptic scenarios. With scene after scene of people applying earth shattering importance to their mundane diets and arguing about having to sell their house while talking about who should cater their 40^th birthday party, I admit I was hoping for a meteor to land on the mansion, um, er, “house” or maybe the earth to open up to swallow the BMW and Lexus in the drive way so that maybe they could think about being 40 is better than being a pile of smoking hamburger under a meteor. When one of the daughters is having a freak out about having to play outside and not use the Wi-Fi anymore, it would've been pretty sweet if a zombie had shuffled out of the bushes to chew on her neck or maybe on the mom's annoying face. Seriously, her face looks like she is constantly sucking on a mildly electrified lemon. There is something about a scene where a man is at the end of his rope and rides off in a blaze of anger, but remembers to put on his expensive helmet that makes me feel like a bad ass for doing pretty much nothing. 

     I actually liked this movie, sort of.  It was like watching a documentary about Hurricane Katrina or the Japanese earthquake.  Horrible to behold, but you walk away glad it wasn't you.

 





 THE MOVIE :
LOOPER
THE DRINK :
 SKYY VODKA DRAGONFRUIT MINIS

  I was not aware that there was a Hyvee in Madison.  When I went in to buy popcorn cheese and alcohol minis it all became crystal clear.   Hyvee is basically the Target of grocery stores.  Everyone there is a crabby rich lesbian, or wishes they were.  I zipped up and down the aisles looking for popcorn cheese to sneak into the theater, because for some reason movie theaters don't cough up the couple of extra bucks it would take to make me actually buy the popcorn that supposedly keeps them in the black.  I mean, seriously, if my business was mainly funded by food and drink profits, I sure as hell would get more creative than just selling plain popcorn, souir patch kids, and friggin pretzel nubbins with bland cheese dip.
     So as  I dodged dirty looks from lesbian and IT employed couples for wearing athletic shoes and sweat pants, I grabbed the cheese and ducked into the attached liquor store.  I thought I would be safe there, but it turned out to be one giant wine rack infested with crabby couples trying to decide what the cheapest expensive wine was so they could look cool without facing reality about how not rich they were. Luckily this was the perfect place to buy mini bottles of some failed alcohol that did not pass the hipster handbook test.
     So I sat in the theater sprinkling cheese on my giant tub of popcorn and sipping surprisingly un-gross marriage of potato alcohol and dragonfruit.
     Looper is really good.  I don't really feel like giving too much away, except for the fact that it follows the simple, yet so often ignored formula of story before action.  And the action is awesome, so imagine how great the story is.  A few words of advice: Don't waste your time trying to figure out how Gordon Joseph Levitt's make-up is applied.  Don't buy the cheap popcorn cheese.  Most importantly, do not, DO NOT try to figure out time paradox.  Multiple times during the movie the characters themselves say they don't feel like talking about time paradox. So please, take their advice and don't worry about it. You do not really know what the actual consequences of time travel would be, so just accept the fact that anyone's interpretation of time travel could be accurate.  When the movie ended half the theater stayed seated and discussed with their friends about how this and that could have happened. Fail.   I had to take a major leak from all the Coke and dragonfruit I had been drinking .  Thanks to all the failed movie goers, the bathroom was nearly empty.  Nearly. A guy in a suit was at one of two unusually close urinals.  I ignored him like you're supposed to, but he just had to say " so have you figured out the time parts of that movie?"
     I looked straight ahead at the wall like you're supposed to and said " I'm pretty sure that Bruce Willis himself told you not to worry about it."  The guy laughed , but cut it short, realizing he had been dissed.
I'm sure his future self is thanking me though.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

The Drink: El Jimador tequila
The Movie: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

     I had been warned about seeing this movie, but it was by a friend that also says "The Life Aquatic" is up there on his top ten list, so naturally I thought "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" couldn't be all that bad. (I tried to do a review on "The Life Aquatic" but I was unable to get the image of all those hipsters gawking at the same movie through their fake lens nerd glasses while wringing their shoddily hand knitted berets in frail, soft hands while making sure no one else was purpously pigeon- toeing  their teal Converse sneakers in quite the same unique way they were.)  Where was I?

  Oh yes, driving down the highway in New Hampshire.  For those of you who don't know, New Hampshire has zero sales tax, and a little tendril of land that managed to worm its way between Maine and Massachusetts to reach the ocean.  If you take almost any exit off the highway along this nubbin of N.H. ( or any exit in New Hampshire for all I know) you will find a gloriously huge, cheap, tax free liquor store.  You can find anything there, from salted caramel vodka, to fifteen different types of absinthe.  Also a big potion looking bottle of pink alcoholic barf labeled Qream. ( see photo above)  This is also where I first discovered I could hold my breath for over two minutes while navigating a bathroom where, apparently, someone had been drinking Qream the night before.

     So that night we watched "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen".  I am a fan of both Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor, which is my only excuse for sitting through the whole thing.  This may have been a mistake.  Much like some friends of mine who in the late 90's went to see The Wallflowers in concert, leaving with giggly high hopes of catching Jakob Dylan's eye, but returning with runny mascara and grumblings about how he was actually sort of a douche bag, I also have lost a bit of respect for Blunt and McGregor.
     When McGregor actually turns and smacks his face into a glass door, I was disappointed.  When Kristin Scott Thomas makes her appearance looking like the daughter of The Wolfman and the Bride of Frankenstein, I was grossed out.  When Blunt spends half the movie moping and blubbering about the disappearance of her soldier boy-toy, not because she loved him but because "she never got a chance to know him", I was gagging. But when McGregor actually brandishes his fly rod like a whip, snagging the earlobe of an assassin from 50 feet away and preventing him from shooting, I was wishing for an assassin of my own.  And when the whole thing deteriorates into some sort of terrorist plot against salmon, I was in the kitchen pouring more tequila.
    While trying to point out all the lame things about this film is about as useful as trying to pick ticks off a feral cat, I feel I must point out one more complaint. C.G. salmon.  I've seen better computer graphics watching my nephew play Minecraft.
     When I first saw the film "A River Runs Through It", I admit that I was one of the dorks that went out and bought a fly rod and had dreams of standing in crisp waters, casting like a pro.  If I hadn't already snapped my rod in half and flung it into the creek in a fit of rage after one too many snags on the brush behind  me, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen would have no doubt produced the same result.
   

Movie: The Artist

Drink: Bombay Sapphire martini



     I admit, I did not have high hopes for this movie.  The fact that it  won the Oscar for best picture was my first warning.  My second warning came a mere 5 minutes into the film when my brain was telling me " better get us some more gin, buddy.  This is gonna be a long, annoying, big band music filled nightmare."
     Right off the bat, there is a long scene showing the audience in a theater watching a silent movie.  Watching a silent movie about people watching a silent movie so early in the film only served to make me remember that they were forced to watch a silent movie, where as I was watching one of my own volition. There is a reason movies have full soundtracks now.  The most important being that sometimes a movie needs to be truly silent.  Some of the best films use the music and the absence of music perfectly to create atmosphere and depth.  The worst ones have the soundtrack blaring away in the background while a dramatic scene gets swallowed up and lost in its wake.  The Artist is filled with  non-stop orchestra music.  If  I had seen it in a theater with a real band, then maybe , maybe it could get away with it.  If you are in your living room, then you are going to feel like you are on hold with the IRS for 2 hours.
    Another problem is with the actors themselves.  Berenice Bejo was a terrible choice in my opinion.  Her painfully bony face and plastic surgery pointy nose were so out of place, as were her bulging eyes and huge overly white teeth and protruding rib cage.  For a minute I thought I was watching Desperate Housewives with the color off on my t.v.  While Jean Dujardin wasn't quite as annoying, I still got so sick of his sad, sad eyebrow raises and the gigantic shark attack smile that makes me wonder if he's not related to Julia Roberts.
     I'm sure most of you are thinking "he just doesn't get it", but I assure you that I do.  If you are working with a limp, boring love story and your audience is a bunch of  limp, boring hipsters that will swarm to anything even remotely retro, this is the film to make.  It was a one trick pony, a gimmick.  If you don't believe me, I'm willing to take bets on whether a black and white silent film will win the Oscars again next year.  Any takers?