Month: November 2004

The New York Times, excitedly reporting on American “progress” in the conquering of Fallujah by U.S. forces:
U.S. Armored Forces Blast Their Way Into Rebel Nest in Falluja
RELATED: Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back

Mr. Courageous: O.D.B. (AKA, Big Baby Jesus, Osiris, Dirt McGirt)
Rapper ODB Dies in Studio
“Number one, I got shot. It made me understand that I do only have one life to live and that it can happen to me. And shit happens when you be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The bullet went through my back and it came out my front. It ruptured my spleen, but it didn’t hit no bones or nothing. The doctors don’t even know how that happened, so that’s all praise due to Allah. It just lets you know that I was meant to be here. And anyway, I wasn’t going nowhere because ain’t nobody take me off this motherfucker till I’m ready to leave this motherfucker… Hell no. I don’t play that dying shit.”
(Quoted from The Nutty Confessor, by Rob Marriott, SPIN, circa March 1995.)

Brett Ratner’s talent, such as it is, is bullshit.
The director, whose most recent piece of pandering, formulaic pap, After the Sunset, will probably be number two at the box office this weekend, could comfortably be described as a bullshit artist, or, more charitably, a complete and total bullshit artiste.
If his critics are to be believed (and in this case, they are), his artistry doesn’t lie in filmmaking, a craft for which he is frightfully unskilled, yet tenaciously and gainfully employed. Ratner has no particular intuition for camera placement, editing, or working with actors: His films are about as enjoyable as a vigorous session of C.B.T.
What Ratner is good at—what he unquestionably excels at—is bullshit. Take the mini profile of him in Saturday’s New York Times ‘Arts’ section, A Hollywood Early Bloomer, Bringing It All Back Home, by Lola Ogunnaike, which is chockablock with Ratner’s bald-faced lies and egomaniacal bullshit.

Meatball Run?: The lovely Chief Inspector Laura Ciano and her sidekick, Superintendent Vincenzo Bizzarro
“It is not a toy, they swear, but a serious piece of police gear, no matter how many Japanese tourists stood at a highway rest stop here snapping away in awe.
“‘It’s a responsibility to drive it,’ said Chief Inspector Laura Ciano of the Italian highway police.
“Paolo Mazzini, a highway police commander, said: ‘Italian people are not always friendly toward authorities. They are curious, so they accept the ticket more readily.’
“‘It’s not for fun,’ he added.
“Still, Superintendent Vincenzo Bizzarro wore a satisfied look on his face when he gave a reporter, fingers dug into fine leather seats, a small taste of what the force’s new Lamborghini Gallardo patrol car can do: nearly 100 miles an hour in just a few seconds, with a row of tollbooths approaching awfully fast…”
From, Whoosh! For Speeders, Speedier Justice, via Lamborghini, by Ian Fisher, The New York Times, Nov. 12, 2004.

“It wasn’t clear if the off-message message was an inside job or the work of a high-tech prankster. A Transit Authority spokesman said the agency was investigating the incident.”
“Token booth clerk David Romero, who notified the TA command center of the bogus message, speculated that someone broke into the TA’s computer system.”
–Ugly Sign Misses the Mark in Subway, by Celeste Katz and Pete Donohue, The New York Daily News, Nov. 12, 2004.

“Don’t you dare try to eat mommy’s Häagen Dazs, Miss Whiskers!”
You’re watching Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, and Bridget’s love interest, the supportive “human rights lawyer” Mark Darcy (as played by the normally acceptable Colin Firth) utters the following line in the middle of an argument between the two lovebirds:

DARCY:
I’m not angry at you, Bridget. I’m disappointed.
(He smiles.)
Disappointed that I can’t go home with you right now.

And the audience collectively coos a unified, “Awwwwwwwwwww…”

Roger Friedman, FOXNews.com’s usually spot-on gossip monger (and by ‘spot on,’ I mean joyfully, hilariously bad, and by ‘gossip monger,’ I mean Miramax party fixture) has an item on Mission: Impossible 3 today. Since he (or the associate producer who formats his column for the web) phoned the headline in, I thought I’d offer some help.
Here’s Friedman’s:
Cruise Out of Control on Impossible Mission
Not horrifically bad (FOXNews.com’s fishwrap sister publication has ten worse every day), but it’s not quite… good enough.
Here are some suggestions:
A Few Not So Good Men Top Gun for a Legend
Minority Report on Cruise’s Risky Business
Do Outsiders Have All The Right Moves, or Is Cruise’s Vanilla Sky Turning Into Days of Thunder as the Color of Money Taps the Legend to Hit The Firm Cocktails as He’s Losin’ It?
Yeah, you’re welcome.