Katt Williams first surfaced upon my radar in the Ice Cube penned FRIDAY AFTER NEXT (2002). I had zero expectations for the film. The first movie is an urban classic, the second falls closer to the exact opposite of a classic (and we’ll leave it at that), the third installment steps it up considerablely, destroying round two’s inept brand of so-dumb-it’s-still-dumb-comedy and even nearing the original’s crass sublimity.
(An almost classic)
FRIDAY AFTER NEXT, takes place during the Christmas holiday, features a crack head Santa (who breaks in and takes presents from homes), and excels thanks to a trio of supporting performances that elevate the source material into something pretty Great. It gives the Great Mike Epps room to shine as Day-Day (his earnest dedication to his position as a “Top Flight” strip mall security guard is side splittingly funny), gives the equally Great Terry Crews some scene-stealing prison bitch moments, and gives Katt Williams a Great role as a pint-size clothing store owner who acts like a pimp (John Witherspoon is Great as well, but…well, I could go on and on…).
(The man in action)
Williams’ character, Money Mike, thinks he owns the world and isn’t afraid to talk trash while every one around him dismisses his put upon menace due to his stature. Many jokes are made at the expense of his height. But like our friend The Honey Badger – he don’t give a crap. He struts around like a man twice his size and talks in a rapid fire, nasally, southern drawl that gets me laughing before he puts out a complete sentence. The film character is served his (unfair, I say) comeuppance (off screen) courtesy of the muscle bound Crews (SEMI-SPOILER: who Money Mike ends up leading around with a pair of vice grips firmly fastened to bigger man’s junk). No matter, whereas FRIDAY AFTER NEXT’s Money Mike is a cagey little motormouth, Katt Williams the comic rips it up. Mostly.
I’ve watched a number of his stand-up specials, AMERICAN HUSTLE: THE MOVIE (2007), IT’S PIMPIN’ PIMPIN’ (2009), and they’re entertaining, but the stand out of his prolific output is definitely THE PIMP CHRONICLES Pt.1 (2006). From bling (a piece on a Chrysler 300 vs. a Phantom is awesome), to haters, to Michael Jackson (pre-death), Williams is on fire. Lucky me, my wife learned that Williams is playing at a nearby improve, so I’ll get to catch his show live in a few weeks. Here’s to hoping he outdoes himself.
Here’s the first fifteen minutes of THE PIMP CHRONICLES. Get through the Snoop intro and the stand up comedy kicks in…
Posted in Movies, Raves on July 24, 2011 by Michael Louis Calvillo
I was really hoping to post Part 2 to my deconstructing the WORM series (here’s Part 1 in case you missed it), but I’m getting a bit of a late start. Here’s something else to tide you over.
I absolutely love…
(This one is worth seeking out)
…ROBOT STORIES is a great indie, sci-fi anthology about robot love. Four, loosely interconnected stories, pose interesting questions about technological morality. One in particular, CLAY, really gets the brain going. It’s about a near future where computer tech has advanced to the point that human beings can scan their grey matter into systems so that when they die, they can continue on via a digital, holograph generating box. The holograms act just like their deceased counterparts and resume life with their living loved ones. During the day, you can hang out with the hologram version of your loved one and at night (or anytime you want, I suppose) you can plug in and spend time with each other in dreams (where you can hug, etc…).
The main guy in the story is a man in his late sixties nearing death thanks to a cancerous disease. He has been moved up on the waiting list to get his mind scanned. Emergency situations like fatal diseases give scanning patients top priority. His doctor bugs him to undergo the procedure. So does his grown son. Even the hologram of his recently passed wife nags him to get his brain scanned and uploaded before it’s too late. The man refuses. He wants to be real, not similiacrum. Drama ensues (no spoilers here).
(This guy want to keep it real. His hologram wife doesn’t.)
Pretty cool concept, huh? It gets my wheels spinning. The living can continue building relationships and memories with their deceased relatives and friends. The dead are dead, but they’re beings are reanimated by a computer program that can puppeteer personal memory into simulated personality. Or, do the dead some how live on? Does the scanning process some how give them a chance to live forever so long as they keep plugged in and powered on?
Regardless of how the dead might feel – if you’re dead, you’re dead, that’s that, and nothing matters because you are no longer. But if a re-animus machine can keep consciousness aware then cool, you actually continue on. Whichever makes more sense to you, the scanning is all about the living. How cool would it be to never lose someone? When you die you become light in a box as well, but you get to keep interacting with your loved ones, be they flesh and blood or computer generated. Pretty trippy stuff.
(Don’t be chicken, robots are our friends.)
The other three films, MY ROBOT BABY, MACHINE LOVE, and THE ROBOT FIXER (my favorite), are equally thought provoking. There’s not a bad egg in the bunch. Check it out when you can.
As a film aficionado I’m the go-to-guy in my family for movie advice, or this actor’s name, or this actor’s filmography, or who starred in what with who, and on and on and on, and I’m happy to dispense the useless information that has somehow filled the nooks and crannies of my superbrain with the trivialist of celebrity trivia. Sometimes I’m proud of my encyclopedic ability to retain film fact (mostly horror stuff, but I’m goood across a variety of genres), other times, it’s kind of embarrassing. It’s a geeky quality for sure. I can satisfy curiosities, and it feels good to be of use and when Jeopardy has a pop culture category, I slay, but in the end, it’s an empty skill. When things mean the most, pop culture trivia usually means the very least. I’d probably do awesome against the SCREAM killer(s) should my life depend upon horror factoids and if VH1 brought back The World Series of Pop Culture and cast me, I’d bring home the big money (come on VH1, try me), but in a real world crisis, nobody cares that Fred Dekker directed 1986’s NIGHT OF THE CREEPS (awesome fun, BTW). In the end, year after year after year of reading movie magazines amounts to very little.
(Screw you, Ogre! Quick – Name me three Stuart Gordon films! Can’t do it, can ya, you big buffon?)
Fortunately, we are not locked in any particular crisis situation and my gift is still of use (sometimes). For instance, as of this afternoon, I can now tell you that THE KING’S SPEECH, last year’s Academy Award winning feature, was NOT the best film of the year. I spent a regal afternoon watching a kingly double feature (KING paired with an episode of ANTIQUES ROAD SHOW) with my wife and daughter and while I enjoyed my time with the family, I found the film to be…um…I guess a resounding meh sum it up.
Look, it’s a decent movie. It’s well directed (Tom Hooper), edited, and acted, but it doesn’t really do much more than plod along and tell its simple tale. Which is fine. More movies should simply do just that, but an Academy Award winner should do something, it should work on you in someway or another and by the time the credits rolled, well, I wasn’t moved. I didn’t feel anything. There’s no denying Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are fine actors, but can you really argue that the film is better than TOY STORY 3 or BLACK SWAN or INCEPTION or THE FIGHTER? I think I chuckled once or twice. The art direction was nice. But TOY STORY 3 made me tear up! BLACK SWAN had me recoiling with disgust! INCEPTION tickled my brain and got it to marvel over time. And THE FIGHTER, well, it cracked me up with its wild over-acting (not an Academy Award winning quality, but the film is memorable and funny to boot). THE KING’S SPEECH kind of just lays there. It tells its story, touches on a bit of interesting history, doles out inspirational cheese, and that’s about it. It is one of the most unremarkable, well-made films I’ve ever sat through. I enjoyed it, but my brain is already making space for stuff that’ll stick whereas THE KING’S SPEECH is stuttering for a foothold. Ask me next year and I’ll be able to list some nerdy facts about the film’s production, (Hooper also directed the HBO mini-series JOHN ADAMS, or, though Hooper is two years older than me, he directs like an old man) but as a story, as a compelling narrative, it’s about as affecting and weighty as Kevin James’ ZOOKEEPER (which I actually liked more).
(Note: There’s more of a connection between these two movies than you might imagine. Both films are ultimately about friendship and confidence. They follow very different paths, but theme-wise, they are basically trying to say the same thing. Though, that I’d rather watch poo jokes and Kevin James’ pratfalls is purely personal preference)
Anyway, if you happened to fall in love with THE KING’S SPEECH during its award-winning run, no offense, we can still get along, we just like different sorts of art. One thing we can probably all agree upon is that THE ANTIQUES ROAD SHOW is the best thing on TV. Am I wrong? Am I wrong? Come on! Don’t roll your eyes. The Roadshow rocks like nothing else! Talk about drama. The appraisal! The nervous chatter! The big reveal!
A woman on this evening’s particular episode had a beautiful diamond necklace that turned out to be worth $250,000! Another lady had a chintzy painting she paid $500 bucks for twenty years back. Turns out, the well-preserved watercolor was worth $30,000 at auction! I don’t know why this show thrills me so, but it seems to work on my wife and kid as well, so it’s not just one of my weirdo quirks (of which there are many). If you’re not watching, tune in to PBS and check it out. Play guessing games. Is the old, dinged up chest of drawers worth anything? Are those little, ugly, porcelin figurines junk or treasure? Even more exciting – is the item’s owner gonna sell or keep a particularly pricey heirloom in the family? It’s an easy call when we’re talking a thrift store painting brought on a whim for fifty bucks. Why not auction it off for thousands? But, what if you owned a brooch, or taurine, or a dress or something that has been passed down from generation to generation? What if it’s worth thousands? Do you sell out and go for the cash, or respect familial obligation and hang on to it? The Roadshow never tells, but then, that’s part of the fun.
Check out this 1,000,000 appraisal. Oh yeah, she’s selling…
Posted in Books, Movies, Raves on July 15, 2011 by Michael Louis Calvillo
Harry Potter is pure magic. I don’t care what any y’all haters be saying about little Harry. Shoot! I love that four-eyed geek. He is always super sincere, and he has that cool, lightning bolt, forehead scar, and an even cooler striped scarf. It’s like a pure, courageous, 10 year-old John Lennon got scooped up from the early 50’s and dropped in the Durselys’ residence (the foster family that torment Harry in the wizards’ off season). Now tell me, what’s not great about that?
There’s also wizards, witches, dragons, worlocks, giants, elves, house elves (Dobby will break your heart), pure evil, black magic, all manner of slavering beasts, Dementors, Death Eaters, and lots of English kids in peril. If you don’t have little ones or haven’t seen the seven (Seven! Going on eight!!!) films for whatever reason, I say you ignore the PG Rating and give yourself over. Getting started is a little rough, a little saccharine, but the movies really mature from feature to feature. The second one, THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, is a bit kiddie film cookie-cutter. Next up, Alfonso Curan’s THE PRISONER OF ASKABAN, is actually a way cool surprise. Just when I thought the series would follow part II into the unremarkable void, round III turns out pretty damn incredible. Colored a bit Burton-esque in its textures (everybody’s skin is kind of a pallid, pale greenish-silver-gray), it features some exceptional time travel sequences that twist the plot up nicely and there’s also scary werewolves and Gary Oldman as wizened, fugitive worlock Sirius Black(cool name, right?).
Episodes four and five, THE GOBLET OF FIRE and THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, are okay. They have some nice sequences (dragons and ghosts and Quidditch liven things up), but things aren’t surreal and artsy interesting like in Curan’s part III, nor are they as tightly wound as the future films. They meander some, yet can’t be skipped if you plan on tackling the series because they add to the complexity of the everly complex plot. I gotta give HP credit where credit is due. The narrative isn’t easy stuff. There is a brainy streak that keeps the movies smart, guaranteeing their classic status. Mark my words, Loyal Reader, these films, as a whole, especially with part VI and VII (part one thus far) (along with the books) will be revered.
So then, parts VI, THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE, and VII, THE DEATHLY HOLLOWS (Part One), really ratchet things up. They’re grittier and feel a bit more like action movies (with characters who have deep roots and more at stake as the players we have actually grown to care about). But wait, no, that’s not quite it. I’m not much into action films. They bore the crap out of me. The later HP movies are different. They have momentum. They feel urgent. And don’t get me wrong, where Curan’s entry may be more arty, he definitely dances to the beat of his own drum, the last two films have a level of artistry that give them their own style. Director David Yates does his thing. He’s crafted a visual style that suits the series. It’s solid, fantasy fimmaking.
(Another reason to check out POTTER – Carter’s deranged Bellatrix Lestrange…she’s a real mean one)
Well then, tonight, it all ends. Tonight, my Loyal Reader, Harry and I walk into the abyss. I hope things wrap up nicely. I’m guessing Harry dies, because the only way for Voldemort to die is for Harry to die, but then, since this is still kiddie fare, the young wizard will come back somehow and every body will live happily ever after (which is okay with me, though I think the series would be awesome, and much more emotionally resonant if they let Harry go out as a martyr).
While waiting for my definitive review, why not learn how to Dobby? Everybody’s doing it!
Since I was very small (or should I say, ‘Since I was very young,’ seeing as how I stand a whopping 5’6″) I wanted to be a filmmaker. I spent my youth reading movie magazines and daydreaming about writing, directing, editing, and marketing films. Like with the book thing, I fantasized about genre work. No dramas, or comedies, or documentaries here, only crazy horror and dark fantasy and the occassional sci-fi freakout. I took these dreams as far as college. I spent a year enrolled in Cal State Northridge’s RTVF (Radio, Television, & Film) program, made a few shorts, did a little, uncomfortable networking, and then promptly changed my major to Creative Writing and got the hell out of Dodge.
Why?
Well, for the first time I got a whiff of reality. While watching movies rules, making movies freaking sucks.
Films are collaborative efforts. They cost a crap load of money to make. And most of the people involved in the industry are Royal Douche Bags. The thing is, I like to work alone – I need to work alone (save for working with another writer – I can handle that from time to time) – I don’t do well with dumbass directors and producers and investors who know nothing about what I am trying to do, who don’t really understand my blood-soaked vision, trying to stick their fat, greasy fingers where they don’t belong. Also, I was broke and developing film was damn expensive (I suppose the digital explosion had made things a little easier in this regard). And lastly, I don’t like working with Royal Douche Bags – they’re full of rank air and suck the joy right out of the art. Writing – novels – not abbreviated screenplays – helps me get my Art on, and the complete, creative control feeds the ego and keeps me sane (not to mention it’s free – all I have to do is fire up the computer and start hacking away).
(But not I. Get back to work lazy kitty kat!!!)
Still, movies rock, I’m a cinema addict, and I keep dreaming about crafting a feature done right, and I can’t help but to hope (yet I watch my filmmaking buddies go crazy and think, no thanks). Maybe one day I’ll have the opportunity to do something Auteur style, an MLC joint from beginning to end. In the meantime, though the majority of my career aspirations are spent writing creepy novels (and the like), I still write the occasional screenplay and have done a bit of work with up-and-coming filmmaker, Robert W. Filion.
I met Mr. Filion at Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors a couple of years back and we’ve forged a nice working relationship. His zombie short, SEE THE DEAD , was playing the festival. I checked it out and was impressed. He read my book, AS FATE WOULD HAVE IT, liked it, and then asked me if I would be interested in working together. Though I was still leery of film and didn’t really want to get involved, I figured what the hell, I want to write for a living and the only way to make enough money to support a family is to just do it. If you throw enough stuff against the wall, something is bound to stick, right? I told Robert I’d be happy to team up. We laid out a few plans and got to work. Since then (about two years ago), we’ve made a few nice short films (my screenwriting, Robert’s production, direction, editing, money, everything else).
(Don’t forget – It’s all about that source material!)
The first short we put together was based upon my story, Chekov’s Children (from my collection, Stoker finalist BLOOD & GRISTLE). I wrote the story back in college during an exercise where we were to emulate a classic author’s style. I modeled my piece after Anton Chekhov. What struck me about Anton’s work was how he mastered capturing a small moment, loading it up with all kinds of subtext and undertone and metaphoric detail, then he’d let the vignette play out until it came to an abrupt end that gave zero resolution but filled the reader’s head with possibility. He let you fill in the ending, often forcing you not to just imagine what came next in the current action, but what happened to his characters’ throughout the rest of their lives. Good stuff. My story came out pretty cool. Whereas Anton was a true master, I was more than happy to accept a young padwan-in-training role and do what I could with my growing powers. There’s some subtlety, some metaphoric detail, but it’s mostly overt, college-kid, A-for-effort type craft. Not bad, worthy of publication and a few kicks, but hot damn, subtlety is tough, man. It’s a skill I still work at every day. I nailed it back then in a raw fashion. And though I still work at it, Loyal Reader, my powers have grown exponentially since then (pick up some of my new work and prepare to have your mind blown – subtlely of course). (Isn’t subtle and it’s brother subtlety, a pair of great words? The way they flow? What they mean? God, I loves me some language). Anyway here’s Filion’s short film. I think he did an excellent job (the actress playing “Ivana” is pitch perfect). Enjoy. Comment. Praise. Kill. Get your Ebert on…
The following video rocks, but be sure to go out and read the source (via BLOOD & GRISTLE).
Michael Louis Calvillo Must Be Destroyed 