Razzie Nominations Announced!

Yikes. 2010 was a bad year for movies. This is probably the most competitive field for Worst Picture I've seen.

2010 Razzie Nominations for Worst Picture
The Bounty Hunter
The Last Airbender
Sex and the City 2
Twilight Saga: Eclipse
Vampires Suck

If you're not a 12 year old girl, you probably agree with me that the Twilight franchise is terrible. What you may not know, is that it is essentially a trilogy's worth of story. There was the first book and second book, but instead of making the last book, there's an extra book first of filler material. While the 4th book has vampire C-Sections and werewolves dating babies, this is the part of the saga where people just sit around and wait. So while the whole franchise is repugnant, this film has the added sin of being boring.

Then there's Vampires Suck, a "parody" of Twilight. It's brought to you by the folks who brought you such AWESOME pictures as Scary Movie 3, Date Movie, and Epic Movie. These "parody" films are basically the lowest, most obvious, form of humor. Their "parody" of Napoleon Dynamite, for example, had a character wearing a shirt that said "DON'T vote for Pedro". Get it? It's the opposite! Their filmmaking style has been described as "the cinematic equivalent of peeing and missing the toilet by a good three feet". While these people have a track record of taking good movies and making terrible versions of them, I shudder to think what would result when the source material is as horrendous as Twilight.

Also, there's The Last Airbender. I reviewed it here, but let me repeat the summary: this is the single worst movie I have ever seen. WORST EVER.

I suspect, however, that if I had seen Sex and the City 2 though, it might take the top spot. Everything that needs to be said about this film has been said in Lindy West's review: "SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human—working hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled cunt like it's my job—and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car".

Any other year, any one of these would be a runaway winner (loser?) but this year, man, I just don't know. Too close to call!

Getting Back On Track

By the way, when the NASA scientists made their list of the top movies least likely to happen, I think they forgot about Battlefield Earth. Something tells me that's less likely to happen than 2012. Gigli got better reviews than this film.

Anyway, as you may or may not know I'm back in Pullman, fending off bears and classwork alike. And you guys made 7 posts in just 3 days? Now I feel like a slacker. I feel like I should be obliged to make a usual column of sorts. You know, classic YNTE's, or game reviews, or the "at least one crazy food item per month" sort of thing.

But this is a Democracy Evanocracy, so I think everyone Evan should get a say strike fear into my heart into what I should do regularly. So what would you guys like to see? Me ranting? Finding Google image searches? Incoherent rabble? Being able to have the right to edit posts again? There's so much potential, and so many directions you could push me towards.

Don't worry though, I'll finally get back into semi-regular posting as usual. Even if this one kinda felt like a big recap post of sorts. The Gauntlet shall be conquered once again this year.

YNTE Movie Night: Time to settle this!

There's a certain type of horror movie that I am a fan of: the Aquatic Disaster film. A film where a bunch of drunk college students, normally on spring break, get killed one by one by some sort of sea monster, normally a shark. It's bimboes in bikinis getting eaten. What's better than that?

Do these movies have complex plots or good acting? Absolutely not. All of them are objectively terrible. But, like so many other films that have been the subject of YNTE Movie Night, they're so bad they're extremely enjoyable.

For years, the reigning champ of the Aquatic Disaster genre was the made for TV "Spring Break Shark Attack". I was searching for a trailer to give you a taste of this cinema classic, but youtube didn't have one. However, somebody did upload the entire movie, and whoever owns the rights to the film didn't care enough to have it pulled, which should be an indicator of how much effort went into this film. Here's part one:



Good stuff, right? I thought no movie could ever be as good as that, and maybe I was right. But 4 films have come to my attention that could be challengers to the throne. They are:

1) Piranha 3d


2) SyFy Channel's Sharktopus


3) The Asylum's Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus


4) The Asylum's Mega Piranha


So, between now and the end of the year (or until Piranha 3D comes out on DVD), I will watch all 5 of these films and determine, once and for all determine what the best Aquatic Monster Disaster film of all time is.

But how much fun would it be if I did this by myself? You can help! Simply watch one or more of these movies, write up a review, email it to evan@jimmyandthehammer.com and I'll post them all up here in the ultimate showdown. A winner will be crowned.

the Asylum

Anyone who knows bad movies knows about the Asylum. They're a group of filmmakers that make terrible movies with titles similar to other mainstream movies, making old ladies think "Isn't this that new movie that's out? Oh, I'm sure my grandson would love this!" And also providing drinking games for those who get it.

So when I bought Halo Reach a couple weeks ago, Wal-Mart gave me a $20 gift card for free. And right next to the checkout was a bargain movie bin. My brother, having the knack to spot these movies, found 2 double features and 1 triple feature DVDs of Asylum films. Films such as Alien vs. Hunter, War of the Worlds 2, Monster, and 10,000,000 BC. I can't remember all the films we got, but I was disappointed when we didn't find gems such as Transmorphers, The Day the Earth Stopped, and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.

There are 2 constants about these movies. Firstly, if they don't nuke anything, it's probably not a movie that was sponsored by the Sci-Fi channel. Secondly, if watching these movies turn into drinking games, you become wasted. In any case, stay tuned, as these may be the basis for a future YNTE movie night.

By the way, speaking of terrible movies, George Lucas decided he wants to remake all of the Star Wars movies in 3d. Starting with the Phantom Menace.

This is not a YNTE Movie Night.

I envisioned the YNTE Movie Night as a way we could all watch terrible movies together and have a laugh at their expense. Fun times are had by all! But this month, that just wouldn't be the case. I can't recommend you see this movie, even to laugh at it, because I like you people, and this is maybe the worst movie ever made.

The movie I saw this month is M. Night Shayamalan's "The Happening", and it is maybe the worst movie ever.


Let's start with the tagline: "We've Sensed It. We've Seen The Signs. Now... It's Happening." From this tagline, we can learn two things: 1, that the marketing guy they hired LOVES capital letters, and 2, there is nothing good about this movie we can market other than "You Liked That Guy's Other Movies, Right? Remember?"

The movie start off with Marky Mark teaching a junior high science class about bees. He then proceeds to deal with an uncooperative student by saying "You're a pretty boy, but in the future you'll be ugly! You should care about science! Say hi to your mother for me!" He then goes on to posit that at times, the best scientific explanation is that things don't make any scientific sense. This is to plant the seed in your mind that later on, when things don't make a lick of sense, it's because of SCIENCE.

Next, we meet Zoe Deschanel, who is way too good of an actress to be in this movie. She's dating Marky Mark, but in the ultimate example of wish fulfilment, is cheating on him with none other than M. Night Shamalan.

The movie also has John Luigi-gezamo, a math teacher who is convinced that statistics is just about making up numbers.

Now here is the plot: Humans have a special part of the brain that has one purpose -- preventing the person from killing themselves. Plants are pissed that humans have been killing them for years, so the plants team up with the wind to murder people, but only in New England. The plants exact their revenge by emitting a toxin that overrides your brains notkillyourself center. Then, after a few days the plants get bored or something and stop. It makes no sense, but come on people, SCIENCE DOESN'T HAVE TO MAKE SENSE OR BE ACCURATE, IT'S SCIENCE.

The real problem with the movie is that not one person in it does a single thing that makes logical sense. EVER. The best example of this is when Marky Mark and pals come upon a group of people who have holed up in their house to wait it out. He asks to be let inside for some food. The people inside tell him that they are waiting it out and will not open their doors or windows for any reason, as the virus may get into the house. Marky Mark refuses to let it go, but the house people are insistent that they will not open up the door or windows. They then illustrate this point by opening up the windows to SHOOT KIDS. And this is just one of the many times in the movie where you will be scratching your head in confusion.

You would think the ending would be "plants are out to get us, maybe we should start being nice to the environment." Or perhaps "plants are out to get us, lets kill all the plants". Or at least "plants are killing us, lets at least act like we care or take some sort of action as a result". None of those were the ending. Instead they went with "plants are out to get us, BUT SCIENCE IS CONFUSING so we will continue our lives as if nothing happened.

"Unexplainable Force of Nature" my ass. It's just flat out lazy storytelling. And it's inexcusable.

This is worse than "The Village", which was about an old timey cult of people with bizarre rituals but it's actually just crazy people in a national park. This is worse than "Lady in the Water", where a lady is found in a swimming pool, but she's actually a mythical creature called a "Narf" who is at risk of being killed by grass dog monsters. M. Night's movies aren't so bad they're good, or so bad they're funny, like many of the YNTE Movie Night selections. They're so bad, they're REALLY FUCKING BAD.

Yet for some reason, I keep watching them. Will I see "The Last Airbender", in which all the Asian character must be played by white actors unless they're bad guys? Probably. Will I see "Devil", a movie in which 5 people are stuck in an elevator and one of them IS THE DEVIL? Also probably. I was going to compare watching his movies to staring at a car crash, in that it's horrible and you can't look away. But this is more like watching a guy crash a car, get out, crash another car, get out crash another car, and people keep giving him cars because he successfully drove once 10 years ago.

Honestly, this movie was bad. Really, really bad. Do not see it. But if you're like me, and despite knowing exactly how bad it will be watch it anyway, I am sorry.

YNTE Movie Night: Matt's Review

Damn Medusa, you scary!

So, I didn't actually watch the movie, but instead I found a clip of Medusa on youtube and listened to this song about the Krakken. Basically, the stop-motion claymation effects were state-of-the-art back then, and still cheesy. Considering they're in about half of the movie (if not more), it just seems like 3D animation in Today's movies, except it wasn't so glitzy (Which reminds me, someone reviewing the NEW Clash of the Titans movie commented that it was equivalent to Transformers 2... burn).

So yeah, the last minute of the song told me the plot of the entire movie, and based off of what I saw, there was lots of killing and bad blood effects and clay. Yet, Rottentomatoes.com scored this movie in the 80% range... so I guess take the special effects with a grain of salt and watch the movie for the plot.

But seriously, nobody wants to see a Krappen.

THE HORROR

This is the most terrifying thing ever:

Funniest comment I have read in reference to this:
"Suddenly I am very sad that his suicide attempt failed :("

YNTE Movie Night: RELEASE THE "CRAPPEN"

Get it? It's like yelling "RELEASE THE KRAKEN" but with clever wordplay denoting that the movie had a qualitative value rougly equivalent to that of human excrement.

If you still don't get it, I'll explain it later.

Well, I finally saw "Clash of the Titans" (the 1981 version). I had never seen it before, but with the remake on the horizon, I decided to give it a shot.

You see, right now 3d is the hot ticket special effects item. It's so popular that movies are getting made in 3d strictly to showcase this new visual effect without any thought to plot, story, characterization, acting, dialogue, etc. The movies are just one big 3d action orgy with a half baked story and fully baked actors doing the bare minimum to tie together these big budget action scenes. By all accounts, the remake of Clash of the Titans will continue this trend.

However, now that I've seen the original, I feel that in this case at least, it's completely justified; asthe original Clash was nothing but a showcase for the "new" "awesome" special effects with almost no real plot or acting to tie it together. The only problem is the special effects are 30 years old and did not age well at all.

The movie makes the old Japanese Godzilla movies look awesome by comparison. The stop motion effects were groundbreaking so they were used at every possible opportunity, but there were many, many instances where they should not have been. There's a "monster" which is basically just a dude walking on two legs with a tail. A rubber suit would have been MUCH more convincing and probably would have cost less. But, for some reason, they stop motioned it.

Luckily, the bad special effects are incredibly humor prone. It is fun to laugh and imagine a world, not too long ago, when this looked "awesome".

And the "plot"? Hilarious. At one point, Zeus tells another God that she has to give up her animal companion (an owl) to his son Perseus. The God likes her owl so she "tricks" Zeus by building a robot owl (aka: R2-D2 with wings) instead. THIS IS A REAL PLOT POINT.

The movie has a pretty slow start. Most of the "action" sequences are in the second half. But if you keep watching, you are in for some chuckles.

FINAL VERDICT: So Bad It's Good.

Have your own opinion? Send your reviews to evan@jimmyandthehammer.com and I'll post them all in one big meta-review at the end of the month.

YNTE Movie Night: March Edition

Since the last YNTE Movie Night was such a RESOUNDING SUCCESS, I'm going to go for round two. And in preparation for its early April theatrical remake, this month's movie is the original Clash of the Titans.

I know almost nothing about this film other than what I saw in the google images search to find the picture, and that alone is enough to make me confident in my choice to include it. THe world of special effects has come a long way, and some of the old methods seem laughable.

Particpating in movie night is simple: Watch the movie and then review it(make jokes about it) here. Non-contributors can email their reviews to evan@jimmyandthehammer.com and I will post them up here. It's that simple.

Happy watching!

SHOCKING NEWS...

...Far Cry is a bad movie.

Despite being Uwe Boll's most accurate adaptation to date, it still feels incredibly dissimilar to the game I played.

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, it tells the story of Jack Carver, a war vet badass who now runs a charter boat. He is hired by a reporter to take her to a remote island. Immediately after she leaves to go ashore, his boat is blown up (this all happens in the opening cutscene). As he investigates, he discovers a sinister science operation experimenting on humans to create mutant supersoldiers.

Here is the shocking part: That all actually happens in the movie!

However, that doesn't mean the movie is at all similar to the game. There's a half hour of useless exposition before the boat is destroyed. Then there's some decent action scenes. This is the point of the movie I began to have a small nugget of hope.

Unfortunately, the movie takes a left turn here. The two main characters find an abandoned shack, and despite having been pursued by men trying to kill them just moments ago, the decide the safe thing to do would be to strip mostly naked and get in bed together. This of course leads to them having sex, despite the fact that they had done nothing but argue the entire movie up to this point.

Then we get back into some plot/action, as they try to infiltrate the military base to steal a boat and make it off the island. This scene could have been good, but was full of pointless dialogue about whether or not Jack was good in bed. It could have been a bit funny as a throwaway line, but it continued throughout the movie.

Then the movie started to really suck. When Jack finds a boat, it's inhabited by "Emilio", a fat idiot who follows them around the rest of the movie. He has no purpose but "comedy relief". The problem is that Uwe Boll mixed up "funny" and "annoying". The guy continues around the movie making annoying comments that have no purpose but to encite a murderous rage in the audience.

The movie was bad. Really, really, bad. But unlike previous Boll flicks, this one had nuggets of decent filmmaking. The action scenes were pretty good, when nobody was talking; there were even hints of a cohesive story for the plot. But the pointless characters, bad acting, and aimless direction keep it from getting anywhere near the potential I saw.

So in a way, this the worst Boll movie, because it was disappointing. It could have been good, but in the end, it was just the same old terrible slop he normally makes.

Final Score:
D--

So there's on YNTE Movie Night in the bank! Stay tuned for next month's flick!

Did you see it this month? Leave your thoughts below!

Worse than Far Cry?

So, I didn't get a chance to watch Far Cry this month. (Sorry Evan)

So instead I present to you Internet: The Movie, something that may be equally bad or much, much worse! Or more entertaining, depending on how much alcohol and drugs have been consumed. In any case, aliens are about to teach you how to use Netscape Navigator.

Also, in light of the fact that February is only 28 days, Tom won't be able to get his full amount this month.

YNTE Movie Night: February Edition

Today I am debuting a new feature I've had in my head for a while: YNTE Movie Night. The idea is that it's like a book club, only less lame. Everyone who wants to participate watches the same movie and then afterward we discuss it's merits.

However, with YNTE Movie Night, there likely won't be many merits: because I will be choosing exclusively BAD movies. Some may be so bad they're good, some may just be bad. I will have no way of knowing until I see them.

Participation is simple: just watch the movie before the end of the month. Then, write about how bad it is and if it had any redemptive qualities or if it could have been improved if it were created by raccoons. If you're a contributor to the site, just post it up! If not, drop your review in a comment or email to evan@jimmyandthehammer.com and I'll parse them all together and post it. This is an opportunity for readers of the blog to become writers of the blog. Pretty cool!

That being said, say something interesting, or I won't post it.

Without any further ado, this months TERRIBLE movie:Far Cry, by Uwe Boll.

Uwe Boll has a history of taking beloved video game franchises and turning them into TERRIBLE movies. His filmmaking style basically revolves around somebody explaining a video game to him in 7 words or less and he makes up the rest of the details. For example, Bloodrayne (the game) could be described as "Half-Human, half vampire chick, who fights nazis" Unfortunately, that was 8 words, so based on the first 7 he set it in the dark ages and it makes no sense at all.

The plot for Far Cry is "Man on an island with a gun". How can that go wrong?

Luckily, here in America, Far Cry got the straight to DVD treatment.

But it remains to be seen: will this be so bad, so removed from the source material it will be funny? Or just painfully bad? You decide on YNTE Move Night!

EDIT: I just checked, and for those of you with Netfilx, it is available through Instant Streaming.

Top Grossing Movies of 2009 suck.

Here is a list of the top grossing movies of 2009 (limited to movies released in 2009, counting only income in 2009. Avatar would be much higher if factoring in 2010 income)

Star Trek was awesome. Harry Potter was enjoyable enough. And I have heard Avatar was actually pretty good (though I am decidedly waiting for the DVD).

Everything else sucks. Why do people pay so much money to watch such bad movies? Really? Sandra Bullock cracked the top 10?

P.S.: Michael Bay, if you are reading this, please stop. No, seriously, stop. For all of us.


Edit: Hey! Looks like I hit my 5 posts this month. Matt seems to be on pace to hit that mark, but Tom needs to kick it into gear or he can kiss his 50 American dollars goodbye.

Which is worse?

Alright, so me, my brother, and my friend Kyle just sat through both of these movies, and I need an opinion--which is worse, "The Man Who Saved the World" (a.k.a. Turkish Star Wars) or the Star Wars Holiday Special? The horribly pirated and not even remotely close to Star Wars film created by Turkey, or the Holiday Special about "Life Day" that has nothing to do with anything and has too many Wookies created by CVS? Here's a quick rundown:

Turkish Star Wars
Drawbacks
---Pirated Scenes from Star Wars that change nauseatingly fast
---Pirated music, mostly Indiana Jones
---Terrible acting and props and special effects
---A plot that makes no sense
---Terrible Dialogue
---Overly long poorly choreographed fight scenes with too much jumping
Redeeming Qualities
---The fighting is ridiculous and makes everyone laugh/wtf at the same time
---Kicking rocks makes them explode
---That guy just karate chopped both of this guys arms off and stabbed it with them
---That guy just punched through a bunch of dudes
---That guy just kicked through a bunch of dudes
---That guy just ripped some other guys' heads off
---That guy just kicked a dude in half

Star Wars Holiday Special
Drawbacks
---The movie revolves around Chewbacca's Family (abbreviated as Malla, Itchy, and Lumpy)
---The Wookies can't even make proper Wookie sounds except Chewie, and the other characters can't even say Kashyyyk correctly.
---Musical performances at random times by people who we don't remember or care about
---Random nonsensical characters that just pop in at random times
---Mark Hamill is wearing too much makeup
---Everyone acts as if ret... erm, chuckleheaded
---Terrible dialogue (or no dialogue with just the wookies) and poor script
---There is a scene with paper. STAR WARS UNIVERSE DOESN'T HAVE PAPER
Redeeming Qualities
---Pretty ok music
---The old cartoon with Boba Fett was alright.
---That one imperial guard that says "I hate fish."
---You cannot get any of the actors in that movie to acknowledge its existance
---The commercials that played during the special are retro and ridiculous
---The commercials were a nice reprieve from the movie
---A good reason to become intoxicated.

So which is worse?

You decide.