The A.V. Club - I Watched This On Purpose

Film: I Watched This On Purpose: Enthiran

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:40:00 -0600

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy/curiosity factor: About a month ago, a YouTube clip of a glorious CGI clusterfuck from the Indian movie Enthiran started circulating the Internet, racking up several million views from people enthralled by this strange movie featuring a paunchy, Elvis-looking actor multiplying ...

TV: I Watched This On Purpose: Legends Of The Superheroes

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:26:00 -0600

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: The world wasn’t always friendly to superhero fans. Before our current era of big-budget blockbuster movies and decent animated cartoons, anyone who cared even a little bit about costumed adventurers had to rely on clunky Hanna-Barbera shows and the occasional ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: Death Race 2

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0600

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy/curiosity factor: I will admit this up front, so you good people don’t get the wrong impression. It’s a two-pronged admission: First, I have never seen 1975’s original Death Race 2000. Second, I very much enjoyed Death Race ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: Caligula

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: Where to start? Caligula is the rare sort of film whose production seems more relevant to its storyline than its actual content. It’s a monstrous, shambling wreck that infuriated its director and its screenwriter, thoroughly embarrassed its cast, and so ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: River Phoenix: His Final Hours

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward. And a good time. Cultural infamy/Curiosity factor: Three DVDs arrived a few weeks ago in one package, all bearing the same logo in the corner: “Final 24: a dramatization.” The subjects: Marvin Gaye, River Phoenix, and Hunter S. Thompson. “His final hours,” each DVD says, ominously ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: Fred: The Movie

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward. And a good time. Cultural infamy: Depending on your demographic, the words “Hey, it’s Fred!” can inspire a variety of responses. For childless adults with little to no interest in people who qualify as “Internet personalities,” the probable reaction is “Who? Huh? What?” Parents of children ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: The Facts Of Life Goes To Paris

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: The “cast takes a vacation” plot has been a staple of sitcoms since Lucy went to Hollywood. (Even Scrubs and Modern Family took trips to the beach last season.) But in 1982, NBC carried the concept one step further, turning what ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: Mutant Chronicles

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:50:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: Die-hard John Malkovich fans and a certain type of role-player might have been aware of Mutant Chronicles when it snuck into a couple of “selected theaters” in April 2009. (Total domestic box-office take per Box Office Mojo: $6,820.) But it ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: Without Warning

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: To the degree that it’s known at all, Greydon Clark’s 1980 cheapie science-fiction/horror film Without Warning is known as a significant inspiration for 1987’s much more successful Predator, which copied its idea of an alien hunter coming ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: Legion

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward. And a good time. Cultural infamy/Curiosity factor: Between the time I pitched Legion as an I Watched This On Purpose entry and the moment I decided to actually sit down and watch it, I completely forgot what it was about. I mean, I remembered that it ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: Gamer

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:30:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward. And a good time. Cultural infamy: Gamer—the most recent film from Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (a.k.a. “Neveldine/Taylor”), the junk-teurs responsible for the Crank movies—was given the standard treatment for studio embarrassments: a mid-January release, no advance screenings for critics, an MPAA ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: Regarding Henry

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward. And a good time. Cultural infamy: Regarding Henry isn’t so much infamous as ignored. Mike Nichols directed it. Harrison Ford and Annette Bening star in it. The screenplay is by a young writer named Jeffrey Abrams—later simply J.J. Abrams, the ubiquitous TV and movie ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: Gentlemen Broncos

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn't impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there's I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward. And a good time. Cultural Infamy: With Napoleon Dynamite, the husband-and-wife team of Jared and Jerusha Hess lived out every independent filmmaker’s dream. While still in their early twenties, the Mormon couple scraped together enough money to make a tiny, low-budget, perversely wholesome quirkfest that captured ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: 2012

Wed, 19 May 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: Even people who normally avoid summer blockbusters seemed to be drawn to Roland Emmerich’s end-times smash-bang like moths to a big, stupid flame. It’s hardly the first time Emmerich (Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow) threatened to destroy ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: Kickboxer 2: The Road Back

Wed, 05 May 2010 12:28:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: Long ago, when the world was new, Belgian karate black belt Jean-Claude Van Damme was more famous for his over-the-top, high-kicking action movies than he was for being a washed-up eccentric spouting impenetrable wisdom McNuggets a la Franglais. In 1989, he ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: The Terror Of Tiny Town

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:29:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn't impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward. And a good time. Cultural infamy: Who hasn’t heard of The Terror Of Tiny Town, a musical Western billed as the “first all-midget show ever made”? Made as a novelty in 1938 on a $100,000 budget—which it handily made back—it was a hit ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: Law Abiding Citizen

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: In a funny coincidence, my dad called me last night wanting to talk about Law Abiding Citizen, the 2009 F. Gary Gray-directed thriller starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. He frequently calls to ask my opinion on whatever movie he happened ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: Xanadu

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: “In a word, Xana-don’t.” So went Esquire’s one-sentence appraisal of Xanadu, the instant camp non-classic that opened in the summer of 1980, a full year after anti-disco fever reached its ugly crescendo during “Disco Demolition Night” at Comiskey Park ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: Jennifer’s Body

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:00:00 -0600

Cultural infamy: Dude, Megan Fox totally makes out with Amanda Seyfried! I’m gonna drop 10 bucks just to see that! Well, at least that’s what the studio and producers behind Jennifer’s Body hoped would happen. They also hoped the girl-power theme—women as the aggressors, not victims—would resonate with women. As writer Diablo Cody told Reuters, “If I had gone to this movie as a teenage girl, I would’ve come out of it feeling totally inspired. I would’ve wanted to write, I would’ve wanted to create, and I would’ve felt like I ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose: Passengers

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: Virtually none. The 2008 movie Passengers wasn’t screened for critics, and barely made it to theaters—it blew through Chicago in a week. It was such a hit-and-run release that The A.V. Club didn’t even have a chance ...