Not the master of being considerate enough to shut the screen door and keep the bugs out, I guess.

Not a lot is going on this week with major Hollywood DVD releases, but at least what little there is includes The Master. There’s also the latest Twilight flick, but it doesn’t come out until Saturday, so come back in four days and see that I’m still not covering it. Not to worry, though; as always there’s enough obscure indie, low-budget and foreign fare to discuss.  Besides The Master, we’ll cover flicks with Gerard Butler, Sharon Stone, and Christian Slater.  We’ve got flicks about surfers and AIDS and elephants and zombies, and even another elephant. Trust me, this other one is luckier than the rest.  There’s a company of heroes and some fast girls.  We’ve even got a zombie massacre!

The DVDs:
The Master
Chasing Mavericks
How To Survive A Plague
Holy Motors
Border Run
Company Of Heroes
Freaky Deaky
The Loneliest Planet
Darnell Dawkins: Mouth Guitar Legend
The Eyes Of Thailand
500 MPH Storm
Fast Girls
My Lucky Elephant
Silent Souls
Total Retribution
Zombie Massacre: Army Of The Dead

Streaming: Check out your choices here.

The description for one of these movies includes the phrase ‘Reptilian Sex God!‘ You’ll have to continue reading to find out which one it is.  There’s also a movie with both Andy Dick and Crispin Glover. If you want to know which flick that is, you know what to do, continue reading.  If you’ve already seen The Master and are pretty sure everything else is crap, feel free to click the link above and skip right to this week’s streaming suggestions.  You’ll miss out on some graphic video of elephants having sex, but that’s your choice to make, I guess. Read the rest of this entry »

As a dumb Californian, I knew Ed Koch mainly as the guy who replaced Judge Wapner on the People’s Court. Later I learned he was also a congressmen and an influential, three-term mayor of New York City. His career path is hard for Californians to understand, because here, it usually goes reality show host, mayor, then congressman, whereas Koch did it all in reverse. In any case, Koch, a Neil Barsky documentary about him, opens today in New York, and in the saddest and best promotional tie in, Ed Koch died today of congestive heart failure.

“Koch” offers evidence that the combative mayor had mellowed little in his later years. Filmmaker Neil Barsky conducted extensive interviews with Koch in his Manhattan apartment in 2010 and early 2011, where the former mayor, who ruled New York from 1978 to 1989, spoke of his controversial time in office, offering no restrictions on subject matter or time.
“He was living the life that any 86-year-old would envy,” Barsky says of Koch, who was 88 when he died. “He was out on the street, campaigning for obscure Democratic Assembly candidates, going up to Albany, having spirited political debates with his family over the dinner table. He remained a very funny, in-your-face kind of guy who loved to battle.”
A highlight of Barsky’s movie comes on the 2010 election night when Andrew Cuomo won the New York gubernatorial race. Koch is seen surrounded by adoring well-wishers, but, at evening’s end, goes home alone. [LA Times]

Koch never married and most people think he was gay, and even though he looks like a sweet old man from a Worther’s box, a lot of people think his fear of being outed kept him from doing more to address the AIDs epidemic ravaging New York during his terms.

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As mentioned in the previous post, the New York Film Critics Circle had their awards ceremony this week, and as a three-time former chairman of the circle, our favorite old curmudgeonarion thesaurasaurus Armond White was in the audience. At one point, Michael Moore took the stage to present an award for How to Survive a Plague, at which point White and a friend began to heckle him, shouting “F*ck you!”, which is much less Armond White-like than when he shouted “Ethel Waters!” at Viola Davis last year.

Moore was on hand to present the award for Best First Film to David France, whose feature “How to Survive a Plague” is a salute to ACT UP, the radical protest group whose most notorious action was to send thousands of protesters to St. Patrick’s Cathedral during the Christmas season in 1989. Dozens stormed into the December Mass to disrupt the prayers and desecrate the Host, which Catholics believe is the Body of Christ. A stunned John Cardinal O’Connor looked on in horror. The publicity stunt was denounced by David Dinkins, Mario Cuomo, Ed Koch and the Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Rights.

Moore, saluting the ACT UP film, said the American public was indifferent to the AIDS crisis as it happened and indeed breathed “almost a collective sigh of relief that it [AIDS] was primarily victimizing gay men.” Moore went on to say he liked the film’s reminder that “the Cardinal couldn’t get through Mass at St. Patrick’s.”

Moore stated, “I personally like that one. I say that as a former seminarian.” But White and a friend shouted, “[Bleep] you!” “You liar!” “Shut up!” and “Drop dead!”

Moore responded, “I’ve pissed off the Catholics,” and began a blessing in Latin. He then went on to say that “those who would deify Reagan and Pope John Paul II are responsible for the deaths of thousands of people . . . because of their bigotry.”

You see, in the world of Armond White, Catholicism is almost as sacrosanct as those benefirous priapizians of modern masculinity, Neveldine and Taylor, whose effervesphorescent tours de force in multi-dimensionarious explosiatalitarianism out-patinas the lambency of even Paul WS Anderson and Jack and Jill. As such, a vulgar interloafer like Michael Moore must be punished with the most withering pejoratives in the junior high milieu. Read the rest of this entry »