The A.V. Club - My Year Of Flops

Film: My Year Of Flops:Contest-Winning Case File #150: From Justin To Kelly

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

By 2003, Simon Fuller had ample reason to feel smug. He made the Spice Girls into superstars. As the evil genius behind American Idol, he transformed a garden-variety talent show into an international pop-culture phenomenon with a hundred variations worldwide. He made household names out of a perpetually slurring former pop tart named Paula Abdul, chubby music-industry lifer Randy Jackson, who was prone to calling people “Dog” for no discernible reason, and a glowering bully named Simon Cowell, who luxuriates in the public’s contempt for him. Fuller was adept at playing the angles. Not content merely to pull in ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:Polanski-tastic Sick-Fuck Case File #149: What?

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:13:00 -0500

Filmmakers usually send location scouts to look for places to film a pre-existing script. Independent film icon Roger Corman has long advocated doing just the opposite, urging young filmmakers to find a striking location—say, an empty mine or a dramatic old mansion—and write a script around it. It’s a practice that led to such Corman classics as The Abandoned Train Station By The Lake With The Guy In The Monster Mask and The Vacant Castle We Paid Boris Karloff To Wander Around For Several Days. Roman Polanski followed that directive with 1972’s What? (a.k.a ...

DVD: My Year Of Flops:Undomesticated Case File #148: Human Nature

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:22:00 -0500

As a child, I used to look forward to Movieline’s annual list of the best unproduced screenplays with feverish anticipation. Every script radiated boundless promise. They all sounded so weird, so brilliant, so original, so goddamned fascinating, so vastly superior to the films that actually got made. I daydreamed about the masterpieces that would ensue if only Hollywood had the vision to turn these genius embryos into movies. There is something incredibly seductive about potential. What might be is invariably more tantalizing than what is. Human Nature, today’s entry in My Year Of Flops, feels like a script ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:Totally Jerking Case File #147: Josie And The Pussycats

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:00:00 -0500

At some point in the ’90s, pop culture was suddenly taken over by a plague of creepily interchangeable teenagers with symmetrical facial hair and robotically synchronized dance moves peddling antiseptic R&B and bland ballads. They were joined in this cultural invasion by a dead-eyed, jailbait pop strumpet named Britney Spears who combined strong Christian values with a heroic commitment to providing masturbatory fodder. There was something not quite human about these pre-fabricated pop icons: They appeared to be the product of a bizarre cloning experiment. Who were these people? Where did they come from? How had our culture gone ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:Ribald Retro Case File #146: Down With Love

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:39:00 -0500

To be a film critic in this day and age is to be intimately in touch with your own powerlessness. But I don’t think I’m telling tales out of school when I say that The A.V. Club rules the Chicago film-critic community through fear, intimidation, and constant beatings with rusty chains. We swagger into the screening room four deep, our giant pompadours gleaming with Brylcreem. We menacingly pick our teeth with switchblades, the handles of our Saturday-night specials peeking ominously from our waistbands. When we get behind a movie like Down With Love, today’s entry in ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:Terminally Unlucky Case File #145: The Number 23

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Twenty-three was a magical number to me when I was growing up. I was lucky enough to come of age sports-wise during the heyday of the greatest athlete in the history of the universe: Michael Jordan. Throughout my adolescence, Jordan’s #23 jersey was synonymous with everything good in the world: victory, accomplishment, mastery, the city-wide glow following The Bulls’ astonishing six championships, and my beloved hometown of Chicago. So when it came time for me to pick a number for my Team Onion softball jersey, there was only one number I considered: good old number 23. I’d always ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:Chick In A Box Case File #144: Boxing Helena

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500

For a brief, shining moment, 1993’s Boxing Helena appeared to be a publicist’s dream. While barely old enough to buy wine coolers at the local Wal-Mart, David Lynch’s brilliant, beautiful young daughter Jennifer Chambers Lynch wrote a screenplay that gave a perverse quasi-feminist slant on her father’s pet themes of voyeurism, obsession, and psychosexual motherfuckery. Or did it? When viewed from different angles, Boxing Helena is either a subversive feminist statement or a creepy sexist fantasy of power and control. Actresses lined up for the juicy lead role of a femme fatale who spurns the advances ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:Nicolas Cagetastic Case File #143: Zandalee

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500

In previous MYOF Case Files, I introduced The Great Gazoo Theory as a way of explaining Marlon Brando’s sad descent from the most influential, gifted, charismatic, and sexual actor in the world to a mountainous walking freakshow. The theory, which swept academia and is now being taught in community-college film courses throughout the greater Tri-State area, proposed that after Last Tango In Paris, Brando fell under the Svengali-like influence of The Great Gazoo, the effeminate, condescending, lime-green alien that only Fred Flintstone could see. I would like to expand on The Great Gazoo Theory by arguing that after Brando ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:Colorblind And Comically Convoluted Case File #142: Color Of Night

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

As I have written elsewhere, my adolescent love affair with film was inextricably linked to my voracious teen appetite for looking at naked boobs. I used the adult-content codes in the movie listings of TV Guide as a Rosetta Stone unlocking top-quality boobage. “Adult Situations” was namby-pamby, unpromising stuff. “Brief nudity” excited the senses, but the “brief” all but negated the “nudity.” “Nudity” was a lot more promising, but awfully ambiguous. “Strong Sexual Content” joined with “Nudity” was the holy grail of late-night television debauchery; it all but promised a non-stop fuckfest of historic proportions, something to plan your week ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:Space Oddity Case File #141: Solaris

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:00:00 -0500

There came a point in the creation of my memoir when I started thinking of myself less as a writer and more as a literary exorcist. I wasn’t telling stories so much as I was conjuring up old demons. I began to think of the people in my memoir that I’d lost touch with as ghosts who existed only in the past tense. Oh sure, some part of me realized they were alive as I was, if not more so—I’m not very good at this whole “life” thing—and were going about their daily business, but ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:All Real, All Uncut Case File #140: EDtv

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

While channel-surfing a few days back, I encountered the surreal sight of an E! Entertainment News Special devoted to the ongoing national crisis that is the disintegration of Jon and Kate Gosselin’s marriage. The mouth-breathing sentient-mannequin-type hosting the special adopted a stern, concerned look she hoped would be mistaken for journalistic gravitas as she reported on the latest breaking news on the tortured couple behind Jon & Kate Plus 8. A rough patch in the marriage of a pair of reality stars on a second-rate basic-cable channel was being treated as the entertainment-news equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis, only ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:Pixelated Case File #139: Super Mario Bros.

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:08:00 -0500

Throughout my life, Mario has been there for me. He’s my very own Giving Tree. As a Mountain Dew-addled young person, I whiled away many a happy hour leaping over obstacles, smashing barrels, and racing up construction sites to save a damsel in distress. Then I’d stop by a pizza place on the way home and play Donkey Kong. When I was 12, my entire family got pneumonia and moved in with my great aunt and uncle to recuperate. As soon as I was well enough, I’d walk over to the nearest convenience store and lose myself ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:Death-Defying Case File #138: Hot Rod

Wed, 27 May 2009 15:15:00 -0500

When Andy Samberg debuted on Saturday Night Live, he was the latest in a long line of handsome goofballs dating back to Chevy Chase. But he was also an emissary from a bold new comedy world. In this new paradigm, the superstars of tomorrow made their names and reputations by making silly homemade videos, then releasing them online rather than playing open-mic nights or doing Second City. There was something appealing about the homemade nature of the viral videos put out by Samberg’s Lonely Island crew. They updated the scrappy “Let’s put on a show!” spirit of Judy ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:Dominant-paradigm-subverting Hippified Case File #137: Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

Wed, 13 May 2009 14:12:00 -0500

When I told Keith that I was thinking of writing about Gus Van Sant’s movie Even Cowgirls Get The Blues for My Year Of Flops, he mentioned that he’d read almost all of Tom Robbins’ books, then realized that he didn’t particularly like him. When I asked why, he shrugged. “Eh, I was in college.” I never went through a Tom Robbins phase, but I have my own mini-pantheon of writers I will forever associate with college. For eternally status-conscious undergraduates, the books we read—or at least litter artfully around our living spaces, in hopes that ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:When Dr. Egon Met Lloyd Dobler Case File #136: The Ice Harvest

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:23:00 -0500

A friend of mine once pointed out that New Yorker profiles generally fall into a handful of predictable categories, the most prominent being rapturous tributes that posit their subjects as unassailable super-geniuses and preeminent architects of contemporary culture. Though invariably well written, these profiles speak the hyperbolic vernacular of blurbs. It’s never enough to argue that a writer is talented and does good work. No, they have to passionately contend that their subject has created masterpieces of such awe-inspiring brilliance that they make the combined oeuvres of Ernest Hemingway, Philip Roth, and F. Scott Fitzgerald look like nothing more ...

DVD: My Year Of Flops:North Of The Border Case File #135: Canadian Bacon

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:30:00 -0500

Just as Ned Flanders likes Woody Allen movies except for “that nervous fella that’s always in them,” I like Michael Moore movies and kind of hate Michael Moore himself. I agree overwhelmingly with Moore’s politics, consider him a vital and important figure in the cultural landscape, and dig Roger & Me, TV Nation, Bowling For Columbine,and Fahrenheit 9/11. Yet simply hearing Moore’s voice while flipping through channels—whether in smug, smirky “Ain’t I a stinker?” smartass mode or trembling with fake sincerity about his deep concern for the common folk he uses as props to ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:Happy Happy, Joy Joy Case File #134: Kids In The Hall: Brain Candy

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:53:00 -0500

Some people labor under the delusion that happiness is mankind’s natural state of being. But happiness has never been our birthright; anger, sadness, and death are our birthrights. Sleepless nights and haunted days are our birthrights. Heartbreak, anxiety, and self-doubt are our birthrights. Death, decay, mourning, failure, and rejection are our birthrights. Happiness is more like a pleasant surprise we get every once in a while, like a rainbow. Or a blowjob. Yet in the insane days of the New Economy Bubble, it looked like permanent happiness forever was just around the corner. A soaring stock market and the ...

Film: My Year Of Flops:My Year Of Flops Norm MacDonald’s Film Career Died For Your Sins Case File #133: Dirty Work

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:30:00 -0500

Since Chevy Chase broke America’s heart and shattered its will by leaving Saturday Night Live halfway through its second season, the show has conducted a sort of open-ended, decades-long casting call for the Next Chevy Chase. Prerequisites for the gig include conventional good looks, height, smugness, and an almost blinding level of whiteness. Charles Rocket was the first and most tragic of these faux-Chevys, a “Weekend Update” anchor tapped for Chase-like breakout status during the show’s darkest hours. Alas, Rocket’s career nosedived when he flagrantly violated the show’s strict prohibition against doing anything spontaneous by swearing ...

DVD: My Year Of Flops:My Year Of Flops, Kicking A Man While He’s Down Case File #132: The Love Guru

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:30:00 -0600

While researching this My Year Of Flops entry, I came across a 2006 New York Times article that time has rendered hilariously ironic. The article, titled “Mike Myers: Intentional Man Of Mystery,” depicts Myers as the Stanley Kubrick of lowbrow comedy, a master technician who’d rather disappear from the spotlight for years than compromise his meticulous comic vision. Like Gallo, Myers will serve no pee, masturbation, or nutsack joke before its time. The article describes Myers’ lengthy hiatus from appearing in front of movie cameras “as a bid to recharge his creative batteries as well as a reflection of ...

DVD: My Year Of Flops:Mostly Singing, Partially Dancing Case-File-And-A-Half #131: Romance & Cigarettes + Theodore Rex

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:00:00 -0600

There’s garden-variety bad. Then there’s dispiriting, enervating, “Why does fate allow this to happen, maybe the Taliban is onto something, how will I find the strength to wake up and face another day” awfulness. The 1996 abomination Theodore Rex belongs in this second category. With a budget of roughly $35 million, the film had the sad distinction of being the single most expensive direct-to-video movie to date. It has the even sadder distinction of being a film Whoopi Goldberg was forced to make after she tried to back out of an oral agreement to star in it, and ...