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Fight Club (1999)
Recently named tthe fourth best movie of all-time in a British magazine poll.
I write this review because today I saw that Fight Club was named the 4th best movie of all time in a poll done by a British magazine ( the magazine wasn't named in the AP report). And this led me to question. How good is Fight Club? Seeing as how by now there has been several standard reviews of this movie I need not go into what the plot is or how superb the acting, directing, or scriptwriting was, but I think this recent poll and all the internet clamor surrounding this movie leads me to ask another question. Why has Fight Club become such a watershed movie?
Fight Club has the interesting distinction of being both underrated and overrated. When it came out it was largely underrated, which is odd since it came under a cloud of criticism for its violent subject matter and it starred two of the biggest Hollywood Stars then as well as now. But this movie really only hit critical mass until it went to Video and DVD. Fight Club found its fan base amongst a lot of adolescent men who pretty much dug the concepts being thrown around. It was philosophical without being over anyone's head, and it was intelligent without being hard to digest. In short it was exactly what it rails against: a perfectly portioned package. It is and was a seminal movie that not only struck a chord with a generation of people, but also managed to be damn funny.
Fight Club is a great movie, but I do believe it has become a victim of its own success. Now people who watch this movie claim to inhabit it and literally worship the precepts espoused by it, ultimately, missing the whole point of the movie, which is the pursuit of honesty at all cost isn't enough of a sacrifice to truly be free. In the end you're just going to have eat a little crap. If you become obsessed with the fakeness of the world you are just as guilty of making it your master. But of course that interpretation as with others is completely subjective. I wish people could just watch this film and marvel at the story structure and laugh at the humor, because anything else is taking this movie entirely too seriously. And for the record Fight Club might deserve to be in the Top 100, but number 4 all time is pushing it!
Last Call with Carson Daly (2002)
notice the 2002 reviews
i believe this was the time when Carson Daly's show was at it's peak. Carson did a really interesting thing then, which i don't think was necessarily intentional. He simply interviewed. his show had more in common with Charlie rose than Conan o'brien and in all honesty he was better off. Now he's moved to LA and further ,morphed his program into the "typical late night show" and it has done nothing to improve the show. The only thing entertaining now is seeing Carson's mysterious weight loss which I can only attribute to a nasty coke habit ( after all it is LA).
In any event, Carson sort of lives in that middle ground of likable and not really likable. I think most people are neutral about him, but when they watch his show they occasionally get frustrated because he offers them nothing negative or positive. He give s them no angle to grab on. This and so much more make him a truly unremarkable host. He is certainly not incompetent, but nothing about him (outside of a good speaking voice) makes him a worthy choice as a late night host.
Haggard (2003)
just because you have the money to make a movie doesn't mean you should
this movie was really bad. it has that quality that a lot of indie movies have: moments of humor filled with long spaces that are completely boring. Any die-hard BAM magera fan will prolly like this movie, but then again thats probably the only person who would see it. someone gave me this movie to watch knowing i am a fan of Jackass and was a fan of viva la bam, before the scripted nature of that show wore thin. To explain why this movie doesn't work i should just say the premise itself is played out
a guy who is with a girl who is horrible to him. And pretty much the whole movie you've got this Ryan Dunn guy whining and Bam magera skipping around like a merry mischief maker. Dicamillo's performance is strange at best. It's a humorous little nonspecific Canadian french accent that pretty much is the extent of his performance (basically funny for 5 minutes and then its like 'ok you're pretending to be foreign enough already")
Maybe it would work if they were going for parody but all they succeed in doing is making a movie with an IQ of zero. I love toilet humor as much as the next guy, but this isn't even lowbrow its just stupid. Its like the only humor to be gotten from this movie is completely inside and the audience, even those savvy to Magera and company, are left out of the joke.
Next time magera is handed a sack full of money let's hope he doesn't blow it on some lousy pet project