Rocknowledgy Episode 31 is up and ready for freddy

yoyoyo Alahoyus true believers, wild thangs, rocknowledgists, brollums, broskeetas, and thorriors. Me and the T6000 made this for you today. We are about to hit the road tomorrow... hope to see you all out there. plenty of places to check our dates out to see if we are coming to your town, but how about here? http://www.volcoment.com/bands/details.asp?BandID=15

Lots of sweet jams this week. Garage, ramones clones, 80s butt shakers, and old vs new hardcore punk jammers. GET INTO IT.

Free download HERE or get it on iTunes!!

EPISODE 31 PLAYLIST:

Intro by T6K,

Beastie Boys- Professor Booty,

Blues Magoos- Gotta Get Away,

Painted Willie- Little Red Book (Love cover),

Gloria Jones- Tainted Love,

Status Quo- Tune To The Music,

JJ Fad- Supersonic,

The Only Ones- Another Girl, Another Planet,

The Seeds- Pushin' Too Hard,

The Hanson Brothers- Stick Boy,

Egg Hunt- We All Fall Down,

Peter Brown- They Only Come Out At Night,

Gorilla Biscuits- New Direction,

Mean Jeans- Let's Pogo B4 U Gogo,

Billy Stewart- Sitting In The Park,

Trash Talk- Gimme Death,

The Hanson Brothers- Road Pizza,

Dag Nasty- Average Man,

OFF!- King Kong Brigade,

Lower Dens- Holy Water,

Outro by T6K,

Weird Al Yankovic- Polkas On 45

bad/awesome flixxx review: Breakfast of Champions (1999)

"It's all life until your dead" - Dwayne Hoover

"Breakfast of champions, Mr. Hoover!" - Maid

"Modern science has given us a vast array of colors with exciting names like Red! Blue! Orange! Brown! and PINK!" - Dwayne Hoover

Based on the Kurt Vonnegut novel of the same name, we have here a very very hard to watch film.  It has enough star power to fill out any genre ensemble cast- but therein lies the problem.  The director might have gotten bogged down in the details of the characters, which can be a good thing, but here the jumping around necessary to character development is so rushed that it does a disservice to the cohesiveness of the film.  Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Nick Nolte, Omar Epps, and Lukas Haas try their best (?) in an adaptation of one of  Vonnegut's best selling novels, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS!!!

CAN'T FIND A TRAILER THAT ISN'T IN SPANISH FOR THIS ONE, SO HERE'S A CLIP INSTEAD:

This one starts out with the protagonist Dwayne Hoover sitting in his bedroom with a pistol in his mouth JUST about to pull the trigger. But he doesn't. This flick differs a bit from the novel, but it doesn't really change too much stuff. I guess this one sort of has two protagonists if you count the side story which you think is a side story, but really has both "protagonists" meeting up with each other in the end. That's good storytelling in a book and I've even seen it pulled off well in television shows. The way it was done in this film seems kind of amateurish. We get the picture halfway through the film, but we are so exhausted by the time they do meet up, that most of us are questioning whether we give a shit or not.

See the whole thing is supposed to be a story about a society (or the USA) as a place where people are just either sedated beyond repair or so wound up that they are searching for anything, reaching out and looking for something, someone, some answers- whether its a god or found in a pill.

The director seems to try to get this point across, but it gets lost (maybe) in the direction the actor's are given.  I'm not sure if they are to blame or the director.  I'm sure they are playing it the way he wanted, but their overdone portrayals become caricatures of the sentiments (I think) they are meant to express.  Willis, Epps, and Nolte look like ham sandwiches.  I think Albert Finney steals the show, and there is another amazing "on tv" cameo by Owen Wilson that is amazing.  Talk about a guy who went for it.  They ran him through the wringer in the last few years as a "rom-com" (romantic comedy) dude.  But here, even if you consider him overbearing in his better roles (BOTTLE ROCKET, THE LIFE AQUATIC {I don't in those, but some people do}) you'll love his role reversal as the interviewer rather than his interviewee (see THE ROYAL TENNENBAUMS).

Dwayne Hoover is a car salesman that is the most famous guy in town thanks to his constant barrage of local tv car commercials.  We've all seen them.  His wife is drugged up, his kid hasn't lived up to his expectations ( a la Death of a Salesman), he has an affair going on with his secretary at work, and his second in command hates his guts.  That character would love nothing more than to stand up to Dwayne, but he's too self conscious about his own desire to dress in women's clothing and how he thinks everyone will feel if they find that out.  The second part of the story is about washed up, burnt out, never was- science fiction author Kilgore Trout.  A very rich man named Rosewater is super into his stories (hundreds of novels, thousands of short stories- mostly printed in porno mags) and is a big philanthropist in the town.  He is throwing an arts festival there and invites Trout to come be the guest of honor.

At first Trout can't decide whether or not he wants to make it happen and come to the festival.  He is full of self doubt after being shit on all these years.  We see an inherent struggle that the author has made, and it automatically feels as if Vonnegut was self reflecting.  He finally decides to hitchhike to the city to see about this vindication and even though he doesn't believe it, see if someone really thinks his published career was worth a damn.  He even has pickup after pickup belittle his works- even when they don't know that they are by him.  We almost get the sense that he'll give up before he makes it to the art festival.  All the while Dwayne is having a mental breakdown.  He wants to stop and be a good family man, but he suffers from lusting after the flesh, and begins to actually hallucinate.  He also has some bad business deal he's involved in that is never explained, and actually detracts from the story.  The little attention paid to the father/son relationship and the creepy son/manager relationship is only very hinted about as well, which also leaves you wondering.  Not sure if the director just couldn't decide on what parts to leave in or take out, or if he just didn't do a good job, or just maybe didn't make the right decisions.  All in all, its terribly hard to watch.  I knew ten minutes in I didn't give a fuck about what happened.  But yet I sat there, teeth clenched, waiting.  Was there a pay off?  Well, I love Vonnegut.  The thing is, its still a good story.  Trout meets with Dwayne and finally he asks him these big life questions.  Trout who always has an answer for everything gives him EXACTLY what he wants to hear.  But Dwayne would have accepted anything he said, because he made it up in his mind that THIS man would be the one to help him out of his torment.  Unfortunately he mistook Trout and decided that he was the center of the universe and everyone was robots meant to serve their purpose for his ultimate life.  Then Trout had to stop him.  A bit different ending from the book.  I recommend reading it instead.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Total Recall (1990)

"You ever fuck a mutant?" - Benny


"What's bullshit Mr. Quaid? Afraid to admit that you're having a schizo paranoid episode, or are you really an invincible secret agent from Mars, who is in the middle of an interplanetary conspiracy to make him think that he's a lonley construction worker." - Dr. Edgemar


"Perfect, my ass! You pop your memory cap before we can activate you. Richter goes hog-wild screwing up everything that I spent a year planning. Frankly... I'm amazed it worked!" - Cohaagen


Now THIS is an action flick.  Twists, turns, you think you have it figured out, and then they switch it up on you at the last minute.  $100 bucks says the remake this summer is dogshit compared to this classic sci-fi gem brought to you by the mind of Philip K. Dick.  Made from his short story, "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale", this is probably the best flick Arnold ever made.  Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone, and Michael Ironside in TOTAL RECALL!!! 

This is what killer sci fi is made of my friends.  Again, I DO NOT plan to go see the remake.  And unlike a lot of my broskeetos, I don't usually have a problem with remakes.  This however is one that does not appeal to me.  Why try to remake perfection.  There are so many movies that NEED a facelift, this I do not consider one of them.  Some may say, well isn't this vloggg dedicated to BAD movies, and I say, no, this vloggg is dedicated to BAD/AWESOME movies.  There's an inherent difference.  Now, down to the nitty gritty:  Douglas Quaid dreams that he's on Mars every night with this hot brunette chick.  He wakes up freaking out in the bed with a hot ass blonde (Stone).  He's a construction worker on Earth who wants to do more with his life.  His blonde chick is holding him back.  The shit is going down on Mars.  There are "terrorists" there who are fucking shit up because the people don't have enough air.  There is a guy there who controls the fans, and Quaid wants to go work on the Pyramid Mines up there.  After a while, they shut down the mines because they say they found some kind of alien artifacts.

Quaid decides since his old lady won't let him go that he may visit this place called "Rekall" that will implant memories in your head of a killer vacation you've taken.  His buddy from work tells him not to do it and says a friend had to get a lobotomy from it.  Quaid acts concerned, but is still psyched on easing his desire to go by convincing himself he's already been.  So he goes and opts for the spy package.  When they go to sedate him, he has a fucking freakout and the technicians call in the head dude to help subdue him.  He screaming that they've blown his cover, and the head dude is calling his technicians idiots, that obviously he's just reacting to the spy program, and the one chick tells him that they haven't even given him the program yet, and that she believes his memory has already been wiped, and they figure they shouldn't be fucking with him.  The head dude says, fuck it, erase his memory of even coming there, and throw his ass in a cab.  So they do, and Quaid wakes up in a robocab not knowing where he is.  He gets out and his buddy from work tries to assassinate with some other dudes and Quaid just murders all of them.  He runs home freaking out and his wife tries to soothe his freakout, and he goes to pee.  When he comes outta the shitter, she tries to kill him confirming that his whole life is a cover that someone has built to hide something from him.  He kicks her ass, and then some dudes that are obviously bad guys are sent to get him and he sees them on a screen and splits.  He ditches them in the subway, but they've got a bug on him.  In a hotel, someone gets him a briefcase.  The briefcase is a computer with a recorded message from himself informing him that his name is really Hauser and he tells himself how to pull the bug out of his nose.  He tells himself to get the fuck to Mars in a hurry, because the main guy Cohaagen is his old boss, and they wiped his memory because of some secrets he knows.

So Quaid goes to Mars, dressing up like a weird old funky mom.  His cover is blown when the suit's voice box starts studdering and he has to bolt outta there.  He goes to a section of town where the rebels hang out and is taken there by a cabbie dude who keeps showing up.  The brunette chick is there and is his old lover named Melina.  She is pissed at him cuz she thinks he split on her and was a double agent.  He tries to explain but she ain't having it.  He leaves to find his old wife and a guy who says he's the director of Rekall and that he has to take a pill so that he can come back to reality.  They tell him he's having a freakout and if he doesn't take the pill, he'll be stuck in his own mind forever.  He sees sweat beading on the doc's forehead, says fuck it and shoots the guy in the brain.  BADASS.  Him and Melina go back to the rebel hideout and she takes him to see the rebel leader, the mysterious Quato.  In retaliation, Cohaagen has the vents turned off so that the rebels begin to run out of air.

Quato ends up being a little midget growth mutant off of one of the dudes.  The mutants are just a bunch of the sons and daughters of the first Earthlings who moved to Mars were exposed to radiation pretty much caused by Cohaagen.  Quato does some Jedi shit on Quaid reading his mind.  Then Benny the cabbie turns out to be a bad guy and he shoots Quato in his brain and lets the other bad guys in.  Too late though, Quaid knows his secrets.  The alien shit they found in the mine is a giant reactor that the aliens built to melt the ice in the center of Mars so that the atmosphere would be like Earth's, and it looks like it's supposed to be Quato's hand that starts it.  Cohaagen knew all about this shit, but he's in the 1% and doesn't want the 99% to be able to breath or pay back their loans or basically have anything to show for a life's worth of work and misery.  Turns out Hauser was in the whole thing and to prove it, Cohaagen shows Quaid and Milena a video of Quaid/Hauser acting like a total dickhead and laughing at how he tricked himself.  So Cohaagen orders them to turn Quaid back into Hauser, but Quaid doesn't want to be a dickhead anymore, so he breaks free, rescues Milena, and they kill a bunch of the bad guys, and head for the reactor.  Coohagen is up at the reactor and tells them not to touch it because if they do, they'll kill everyone.  Quaid knows he's full of shit and tries to anyway, but Cohaagen says he'll blow up a bomb.  Quaid blows it up on purpose, opening a hole to the outside which starts sucking everything outside.  Cohaagen gets sucked out and his tongue and eyeballs explode and he dies.  Quaid tries and tries and finally touches the reactor to turn it out, but is still sucked out.  Him and Melina are sure to die of the same fate, but - (and this is a HUGE stretch of the imagination) the air starts shooting violently out of the pyramid mountain and exploding gas into the air.  This bursts the windows in the Mars colony, and SUPER RAPIDLY changes the atmosphere into one that humans can breathe in.  This is the most completely suspect part of the flick essentially because let's say this could actually happen, there is no way in hell that the air would change to oxygen so fast that right before their eyes they'd see everything turn to blue skies, and Quaid and Melina would have time to NOT DIE.  I call bullshit on that part, but other than that, this is the good shit.  Should you see it?  You already should have dudes (and dudettes).  DID I FORGET TO MENTION THAT THERE'S A CHICK IN THE MOVIE WITH THREE TITTIES????  THERE'S A CHICK IN THE MOVIE WITH THREE TITTIES!!!!  THAT'S BASICALLY THE BEST PART.

bad/awesome flixxx review: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

"And crawling, on the planet's face, some insects, called the human race. Lost in time, and lost in space... and meaning." - The Criminologist


"Hot patootie, bless my soul! I really love that rock n' roll!" - Eddie


"Enchanté. Well! How nice. And what charming underclothes you both have. But here. Put these on. They'll make you feel less... vulnerable. It's not often we receive visitors here, let alone offer them... hospitality." - Frank Furter


I often wonder why its taken me SO long to see this movie.  I have to admit, until recently I'd never seen it, although I must've told my Earth parents I was driving to Charlotte to see it at least 50-100 times when I was 16 or 17 for a midnight showing.  And I DID initially set out to go see it, but the fact that the Silver Screen Cafe showed it every friday and saturday night at midnight meant that I'd be able to see it sooner or later, AND the fact that everyone seemed to go to repeat viewings and they only STARTED at midnight meant that I could stay out super late on the weekends if I pretended that that was my destination.  So I definitely pretend saw it at least fifty times over the course of a few summers. However, even though I had interest in seeing it once upon a time, I never really gave a shit, and it wasn't until recently going over "my list" of classic flicks I've never seen, that I realized it was about time to see what this "time warp" shit was all about.  Who knows, I may even like it.  Did I?  Well... let's just say it starts off pretty good.  Tim Curry, Barry Bostwick, Susan Sarandon, and fuckin Meatloaf star in this glammed out rock(?) musical called THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW!!!

 Ok, a lot of this shit doesn't make sense, and I think fans probably think they know what's happening here, and I guess its all PRETTY basic stuff, but again, some things never really add up.  Like who the fuck is the narrator guy?  "The Criminologist"?  If you've ever seen THE EIGER SANCTION you'll recognize him as Dragon (the albino head of the spy organization that tricks Clint Eastwood into "sanctioning" two more bad guys for them by stealing his paintings).  But in this, he's sort of telling a story, and it works to a point, but then they bust into this dance.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Ok, so in the beginning, there's a wedding.  A dude marries a chick and two guests at the wedding end up getting engaged at the church right after the newlyweds drive off on their honeymoon.  If you look closely you'll see our main antagonist and his crony standing on the front steps of the church with the other guests.  No explanation there, but the criminologist is looking at a pic of them with his magnifying glass suggesting something... but I digress.  "Brad" only asks "Janet" to marry him in the first place because the dude who JUST got married said something along the lines of her being hot stuff, and that maybe he had had his way with her in the old days or something.  Definitely Janet had a thing for this guy who got married as she keeps fawning over him even after he's gone.  So Brad ends up popping the question as well as busting into one of the first song and dance routines.  Here's where it takes a turn for the worse.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not 100% against musicals, its just that it doesn't really bode well for this one... Maybe this takes repeat viewings to get into..... OR maybe some of the songs are unnecessary.

So after they get engaged, Brad and Janet decide to head out on a trip, and they do so right before a storm is on the rise.  Late into the night, they head down a long deserted road (except for some wild night bikers) and end up getting a flat tire.  The rain picks up and Brad decides to walk back to a castle they saw a ways back and try to use a telephone because he unfortunately never fixed the hole in his spare.  They go over to the castle, sing another song, and then finally this lanky creepy heroin eyed butler lets them in.  Then a maid in camoflage emerges from the staircase.  They seem to have arrived during a weird midnight party.  During this party, the guests do this dance that is never EVER explained called "the Time Warp".  I kept thinking the whole time maybe they WOULD time warp or something like that, but they never do.  So finally their host shows up and does a very impressive albeit very suggestive dance number called "Sweet Transvestite from Sexual Transylvania".  I don't think anyone would have ever confused him for not being one, but maybe he wanted to show off.  Either way, they make them strip (I THINK maybe because their clothes are wet?) and then he gives them something to wear, and invites them up to his lab.  The other guests come up to but are on more of a "student-style" viewing level whereas Janet and Brad are on the main floor with Dr Frank Furter.  Now is when he finally explains why they are having a big celebration.

Ok, so the BEST part of this whole movie is that back in 1975, Susan Sarandon was a FUCKING BABE.  AND for 90% of this flick, she's in her fucking underwear.  Boner city.  So creepy ol Dr Frank Furter (And I say creepy NOT because he's a transvestite, that's his prerogative, I say it because we haven't even seen what he's really up to and if I was there, I'd already be creeped the fuck out) puts on some really long gloves and goes on and on about his wild invention that he's about to unveil for his amassed group of dancing guests.  What he rolls out is his perfect specimen, a man build like the proverbial "Adam", almost like "Adam" from He-Man actually now that I think about it, named Rocky Horror.  Dr Frank N Furter has found the secret of life, and has built his perfect man.  Unlike Dr Frankenstein though, it seems that Furter needed to take brains from humans who were still alive.  Enter Eddie (Meatloaf) who busts out of a freezer on a motorcycle at first having me believe he had been one of Furter's earlier attempts at creating life.  But I think from what I gather, Eddie was just a rocknroller pizza delivery boy that Furter kidnapped and stole his brain.  And I think the one groupie chick was his girlfriend that came looking for him but just became another pawn in Furter's real life sexual fantasies, because she gets psyched when he comes back, and pissed as Hell when Furter chops him to fucking pieces after he drives the motorcycle around the lab scaring the guests and raising a little rocknroll hell.

This is where it gets wild.  Ok, so somehow Furter then seperates and bangs BOTH Janet AND Brad.  I guess neither were really concerned with their engagement or maybe Furter REALLY is convincing.  Then Janet goes and bangs Rocky.  Then Janet and Brad's high school science teacher shows up confusing everyone.  Rocky thinks he's had Brad & Janet spying on him, and no one knows why he's there until its discovered that his nephew was Eddie.  Everyone busts everyone for having sex and they are all in the middle of a huge arguement, but the butler and his sister/lover/maid ring the dinner bell.  If THAT really worked in real life, and you could actually get everyone to stop fighting after adultery, and affairs, and murder and whathaveyou, then this would be a lot more tolerant world.  I'm not fucking buying it.  Maybe that's how shit worked in '75, but I doubt it.  We've all seen morning talk shows, that isn't how it works.  The dinner comes to a head when the groupie starts freaking out, and Furter says fuck it, and reveals that they've all been EATING Eddie!!! ONE UP!!  So then they all run around singing and chasing each other until Frank gets the butler to flip a switch turning them into marble statues.  Here comes some filler.  I don't understand this, but the statues are lined up, and they do this cabaret tribute, and then jump into a pool and start having an orgy.  My guess is that they've given in to their wildest animal inclinations and forgotten all the reasons they were pissed at each other.  Maybe they're brainwashed.  Then Furter sings the LAMEST song of the flick, which he's just all sad for himself.  Boo hoo.  Then the butler and the maid bust in all fucking Ziggy Stardusted out and starts zapping motherfuckers with this trident laser gun.  They reveal that they're aliens and Furter now has to work for them and go back to Transylvania or die.  He dies.  They tell Brad, Janet and the doc to scram or get fucked.  They scram.  Then they blast off in the castle back to the planet of Transexual.  The End.  Wow.  Like I said, it starts off well.  Its very ending is ok.  But there is a lot of filler, and I'm glad I didn't waste all my weekends watching this flick over and over and over and over like I said I did.  I do however wish that the Silver Screen Cafe was still there in Charlotte.  Back then there wasn't a lot of theaters that served beer.  Come to think of it, there still aren't in that area.  Should you see it?  Yeah, why not?  Once isn't gonna hurt ya.  But wait until there's NOTHING else going on.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Disorderlies (1987)

"Chill out, Winslow. We just went to an all night drug store to get some medicine. And it worked." - Albert


"Too damn skinny. You can see their bones and stuff, they look like bicycles. I want a woman that looks like a Cadillac." - Kool


"A Florida lie detector is a 300-pound white man... with a baseball bat." - Sgt. Bledsoe


This movie is all time class.  The Fat Boys were all time, and what you have here is classic Three Stooges style slapstick along with mid 80s hip hop (which in some people's minds was the finest kind, if you know what I'm talkin' about...) made by 3 of the fattest (not phattest {but maybe}) dudes in the biz.  I present to you Ralph Bellamy (one of the old dudes from TRADING PLACES) and the Fat Boys in DISORDERLIES!!!

It's funny- after watching the trailer, it makes total sense that the movie reminded me of The Three Stooges.  I think they based it on that, and it looks like they even tried to sell The Fat Boys as a new team of urban three stooges.  The boys play it well too.  There's even a scene in the beginning where the boys are working in a rest home and they eat a bunch of cakes in the kitchen.  Then the guy who runs the place comes out later into the room where the boys are working with all the elderly people and there is row after row of long covered tables in the room leading me to believe this was going to be an ode to The Three Stooges short "AN ACHE IN EVERY STAKE" or the one where they're throwing pies at each other at the end called "IN THE SWEET PIE AND PIE". It didn't do that, but I still think it could be a nod.  There are plenty of other face slaping, whoob whoob whoob moments though.

So the jist of this movie is that there is an old man named Albert.  He has a shitty snot nosed nephew named Winslow who's in the hock to some Puerto Rican gangster for a SHITLOAD of bread.  His last ditch idea is that sooner or later his bed ridden sick uncle is going to die and he's going to inherit everything.  When he gets desperate, him and his effeminate Chilean man servant decide to someone speed up the death process.  They think maybe the orderlies are doing too good of a job, so Winslow fires them and searches the country (somehow?!? They didn't have search engines back then) for the WORST orderlies in the business.  Not like someone would advertise that they have the worst ones, but he goes from Palm Beach, Florida and finds them (again SOMEHOW) in Brooklyn, New York after (or during) getting fired from their cake fiasco.

The boys have never been away from home, and find Florida pretty weird.  Before they even get to the mansion, Marky gets thrown in jail for "hollerin" at two chicks riding bikes.  Shits wack in Florida.  They start off by dumping Albert in the pool.  Not a good first impression.  Pretty soon, the boys have snuck Albert out of the house b/c Kool didn't think he could take it down there and wanted to be dropped off at the airport.  But when they pick up some chicks, he changes his tune.  They all go to a roller skate rink where the chick from Art of Noise is jamming in the middle of the place, which is radder than you would ever think.  Albert wakes up and wants to go home.  But then this Asian cutie jumps in his lap and he starts talking like the fat boys using terms like "illin'", and "homeboy".  Winslow tries to give Albert a lethal injection but ends up killing his own dog (which the boys hate).

Next the boys decide to empty out Albert's wild ass computer robot pill machine so that they can use the pills to play poker.  When the butler comes to the door, they scoop up the pills and Marky ducks out to hide them.  But he gets caught up flirting with the maid after the pizza arrives (PIZZA!) and she throws the pills out.  Later he goes looking for them and realizes what he's done.  Three stooges slapstick ensues.  The boys are freaking out because Albert goes into a super deep sleep which they think is a coma.  They think they've killed him, and Winslow prematurely begins calling the funeral home.  But Albert wakes up better than ever.  Turns out he was overmedicated, and the boys bungled a breakthrough in his recovery.  Winslow decides its time to kill the old man, and vows to frame the boys for it.  But the boys record a cover of the Beatles "Baby, You're a Rich Man" and the camera catches Winslow divulging his plan to the gangster.  Kool and Buffy are arrested but escape and its up to them to rescue Marky, the maid and Albert before its too late.  You'll have to rent this and see what happens for yourself, but I highly recommend splurging like $1.98 for this on VHS on Amazon rather than the 10 plus bucks it would cost you to see the new THREE STOOGES flick.  again, word.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Fear of a Black Hat (1993)

RIP Adam Yauch, Beastie Boys.

"It's our civic duty to bang the booty." - Tasty Taste

"We anti-violent. Anyone says different, I'll bust a cap in their ass." - Tasty Taste

"Right, but see actually that shit was supposed to be NWH - Fear of a Black Hat, then subtitled "Don't Shoot Until You See the Whites." - Ice Cold

"...of their eyes?" - Nina Blackburn

"Whose eyes?" - Ice Cold

""P", Political, "U", Unrest, "S", Stabilize, another "S", Society, "Y", Yeah." - Ice Cold

I remember when this came out I thought it was fucking hilarious.  I've always been an NWA and Public Enemy fan, and back then I thought this poked fun at the genre in a light hearted way.  I'm not completely sure which one came out first, this or CB4, but I know that they were about similar subjects.  I'm also a fan of mockumentaries of which this is one.  I also ALSO remembered this being WAY funnier than it was upon rewatch.  BUT it's still pretty good.  A lot of "B" movie actors and Lamar from REVENGE OF THE NERDS!!! in FEAR OF A BLACK HAT!!!

 This one centers around a documentary being made by grad student Nina Blackburn on the American Hip Hop scene of the mid 90s.  It pokes fun at almost every type of hip hop, from gangsta to pop rap, and includes spoofing bands, managers, filmmakers and producers alike such as NWA, Public Enemy, Vanilla Ice, Salt' N' Pepa, MC Hammer, Spike Jones, John Singleton, etc, etc...  Nina follows the misadventures of NWA (Niggaz With Hats) on their rise, fall, and subsequent rebirth in the rap game.

 NWH is Ice Cold (spoofing Ice T/ Ice Cube), Tasty Taste (spoofing both Flava Flav and EZ-E), and Tone Def, the DJ of the group.  NWH explain that the reason they wear hats is that back in the day, "when there were slaves and stuff, we was forced to work in the hot sun all day, hatless. I mean, not even a babushka... So when the slaves got back from the fields, they was too tired to revolt against they masters. So what we're sayin' now is: Yo, we got some hats now, muh-fuckas."
Some of their songs "Booty Juice", and "Come and Pet the P.U.S.S.Y" spark outrage from critics who say that they degrade women, but Ice Cold does his best to explain that the songs are actually very socially relevant.
                                       
 Some of the feuds that NWH have are with other groups like The Jam Boys, Vanilla Sherbert, and MC Slammer.  There's also sort of an ode to SPINAL TAP in that all of the managers for NWH have been killed in a bizarre fashion (they killed them), just like all the drummers in Spinal Tap were killed by unusual circumstances.  The movie follows NWH's rise from getting no respect at shows from promoters like being billed as "special guest" or "others", to having hit singles and selling out shows.  Then at a certain point, with fame comes women, and a groupie named Cheryl starts dating Tasty Taste, also mimicking a theme from Spinal Tap where the David St. Hubbins girlfriend creates a "Yoko" rift within the band.  Ice Cold warns Taste that Cheryl "ain't nuthin but a ho", but he doesn't listen.  A sure enough, Cheryl's money grubbin', triflin', manipulatin' ways come to the forefront when she convinces Taste that Ice Cold is getting all the attention after Cold is late to rehearsal after working late on a movie.  Ultimately this causes the band to break up, and they each continue with their careers.

Ice Cold starts a C&C Music Factory inspired band called The Ice Plant, Tone Def gets hippied out with his new band New Human Formantics (spoofing PM Dawn).  And Tasty Taste goes solo under the name Extreme Use of Force (spoofing LL Cool J's "mama said knock you out").  Finally some shit goes down at a concert and the perfect storm happens when all three performers just so happen to be on the same lineup.  A promoter convinces them that they NEED each other and they get back together and jam.  Then there's a montage of "where they are now" at the end.  Should you watch this?  Well, it IS a bit dated now, some of the jokes just don't work as well, or maybe they weren't that funny ever in the first place and I was just into it when I was younger.  Either way its pretty funny, and if you're a fan of the genre, then yeah check it out.  word.  "FUCK THA SECURITY GUARDS!!"

bad/awesome flixxx review: Hanna (2011)

"Kissing requires a total of 34 facial muscles, and 112 postural muscles. The most important muscle involved is the orbicularis oris muscle, because it is used to pucker the lips." - Hanna


"This is very, very difficult. But sometimes children are bad people, too." - Marissa


"Where do you come from?" - Hotel owner
"The forest." - Hanna


Talk about a badass flick.  I waited for a long time to see this.  I remember seeing the trailer and freaking out.  Sometimes- and I think it's very rare these days, but there will be a trailer- where dads everywhere look over at their sons and say, "we're there for that one!"  This was one of those.  AND even rarer is when the movie actually holds up to the excitement of the flick.  This was one of those as well.  A new comer, who I think is absolutely incredible in this, Saoirse Ronan, plays the lead role.  With Eric Bana and Kate Blanchett with a TERRIBLE fake accent, I give you HANNA.

This one starts out with a bang.  Actually an arrow shot.  Then a bang.  We come upon Hanna in the northern wilds of Finland near the end of her training and quite possibly her childhood.  She's been raised since she was two years old by her father Eric in the forest to be a perfect fighter/unkillable agent.  For what, she does not know.  We see multiple almost montage scenes of her and father training, learning to use hand to hand combat as well as weapons and wilderness survival techniques.  She apparently has never heard music, and is ignorant to modern technology.  She knows numerous languages and repeats verbatim long passages of encyclopedic knowledge.  She frequently reads from a blood stained Brother's Grimm children's fairy tale book.

At a certain point, she tells her father that she is ready, and that it is time.  he doesn't think so at first, but when she wakes up the next day, he has pulled out some sort of transmitter and begins to tell her that if she flips the switch, a female agent named Wigler will come and try to kill her and won't stop until one or the other is dead.  She has memorized over and over several portions of back story on who she is and where she's from and other pieces of a fictional life.  After some time mulling it over, she flips the switch.  When her father comes home, he packs his shit and tells her to meet him in Berlin.  She sits and waits for what is to come. Wigler sends agents to capture Eric, and in the process they find Hanna, who immediately kills a good number of them.  They finally overwhelm her and take her back to some government processing facility.  She asks to speak to Wigler and Wigler sends in a body double.  Then Hanna asks her a bunch of questions about how Wigler met her father, and Wigler is actually feeding the right answers to her through an ear piece.  Hanna begins crying and hugging the double who is a little freaked out, but before they can rescue her, she fucking kills the double and then shoots out all the cameras, and kills a bunch of agents before escaping out the fucking air ducts!!  Then she gives chase across Europe on her fucking mission to make it to Berlin to meet up with her dad.

Turns out she's in Morocco.  She meets up with this boy and girl after staying overnight in a hotel that had television that freaked her out, since she'd never seen one before.  The boy and girl's parents are British hippies on holiday and they are spitting to Spain, so Hanna stows away in their camper.  The little boy sees her, but he likes her, so he keeps mum.  They keep having adventures together, riding motorcycles with boys, and then almost kissing one, until her dad's "boyfriend repellant" programming becomes obvious.  Then Wigler who is giving chase hires this crooked whistling ex- agent who'll do really bad stuff that she can't do, and sends him and his goons after Hanna.  He really gets a scent for them and then meets up with the family and almost gets Hanna, but Hanna kills one of his droogies.  Then she has to split or be killed, but the bad guy - Isaacs calls in Wigler who interrogates the family.  None of them really even know shit, except for the little boy.  He tells them that he heard Hanna say she was going to Berlin.  DOOF!

So I don't wanna give away the ending to this one since its still SO new, and a lot of mafks haven't had a chance to see it. BUT seriously, if I could recommend a newer badass, fast paced, action type flick, with a couple twists and more than enough bang bang shoot em ups for your buck, I would say def check this one out.  The scenery is great, the soundtrack is creepy and bumpin, the idea of a girl that age who is totally clueless to the modern world is just an amazing concept in and of itself.  Check this one fo sho.  word.

bad/awesome flixxx review: Harlem Nights (1989)

"I ain't playin' games no more. You put that fuckin' razor away or I'll blow your goddamn pinky toe off!  I'm not playing with you. I will blow that little black, gnarled crusty, dead motherfucker the fuck off your foot! Now put the razor away!" - Quick


"Oh, he proposed to her four times already, said he would leave his wife & kids and convert from Catholic to Baptist. Now you know that's some mean pussy to make a man change gods." - Bennie


"Hey man, that's bullshit. OK? You know when you die? When you're 89... got your children and your grandchildren around the bed... that's cool. It ain't cool to die at 27. I'm not gonna let you do that to yourself. I'm not gonna let you do it to me. 'Cause they kill you, they're gonna have to kill me. 'Cause I'm gonna kill them." - Sugar Ray


This is one of those flicks that you gotta watch with your old man.  Me and my Earth pop must have watched every movie that Richard Pryor was in.  And before he sucked we watched all of Eddie Murphy's too.  This one was a special one for sure, because it even had Red Foxx in it.  And we definitely watched a shitload of SANFORD AND SON when I was growing up.  Another wild thing to think about was not only the incredible cast of characters in this, but how many of them were dead only a few years later.  Richard Pryor and Red Foxx are gone, but also Robin Harris.  There were cameos by Charlie Murphy, a full two decades before he'd be "discovered" over on the Chappelle Show.  And the one by Arsenio Hall is hilarious.  All of them plus Della Reese, Jasmine Guy, Stan Shaw, and fuckin Danny Aiello.  This is HARLEM NIGHTS!!!!

 This one starts out with Richard Pryor as Sugar Ray.  He's running a dice game in the back of a pool hall in like 1918 in Harlem.  He almost gets got by a disgruntled player, but a lil orphan dude named Quick shoots the patron in the head.  Sugar Ray takes Quick under his wing.  Fast forward 20 years, and Quick works for Sugar Ray at his hot spot gambling joint that runs a brothel out of the back.

This big shit gangster named Bugsy Calhoun sends one of his upper goons to scope out Sugar Ray's because he hears he's losing his ass to them out there in Harlem.  Racism was still rampant, and these guys couldn't stand a black guy having a leg up on them.  So Tommy (the goon) brings his hot ass chick in there with him, and Quick is smitten.  But Sugar warns Quick not to mess with her because she's actually Bugsy chick and it has to be bad news.  When that doesn't scare them, Bugsy sends a shitty crooked cop over to shake Sugar's place down threatening that if they don't cut Bugsy in, they'll shut their spot down.

So even though he doesn't want to, Sugar thinks he's had a good run, but so many people have worked for him over the years, he wants to shit this gangster and take care of his people.  There's a big heavyweight boxing match coming up and the champ is a regular at Sugar's.  So the big scam is to bet on the other guy to make the gangster's think they talked the champ into throwing the fight.  They also get one of Vera's finest whores to distract Bugsy's main bagman so they can ALSO rob his bookie that night too and double up on their bread.  A bunch of shit happens.  The crooked cop kills Tommy for Bugsy cause he came up short on bread.  Quick goes to see him and leaves finding him dead but is confused for the killer by Tommy's brother (Arsenio).  Quick kills all of them in one of the funniest scenes of the flick.  Then he's gonna bang the mistress, but she tries to kill him.  He kills her instead.  Then the gangsters burn down Sugar Ray's place.

So thanks to more crooked cops, the seemingly smooth robbing of the bagman gets bungled, but they still hopefully will have the fight money.  Sugar's dudes blow up Bugsy's club JUST as he figures out the fight hasn't been fixed and he bet on the wrong horse.  WHOOPS.  Then they trick the main crooked cop and lock his ass in an old bank vault.  Bugsy gets home and he's pissed.  The bagman brings the bread, but its "sugar" in the bags.  Then Vera shows up and tells them where to find Sugar and Quick.  We think she's switched sides, but when they all show up there to kill them, jokes on them, they all blow up.  Then we see Sugar paying off 2 white guys who pretended to be cops that night.  They ended up getting all the bread in the end anyway.  Should you watch this?  If you dig all these actors, then yes, its a pretty funny period piece, and some great late performances from some of the older generation of black comedians.