Podcast: The Last Airbender (2010)

M. Night Shyamalan writes and directs this adaptation of the popular Nickelodean show. It has the same skilled writing and energized fight scenes as the show except not at all. It's actually a stilted rushed mess that muddies up the quality of the source material, laden with lazy exposition and non-sensical character mood swings. And everyone mispronounces their own names. Starring the kid from Slumdog Millionaire and no one else.

Some Other Notes:

• Peebending inevitably leads to bloodbending.
• AS YOU KNOW...
• We eagerly await the return of Exposition Boy in The Last Airbender 2: Bend Harder.
• "We were trapped under the water of the ocean. Thanks for saving me!"

Podcast: Jade (1995)

The dour looking woman from Men in Black and Dogma (Linda Fiorentino) and David Caruso (YEEEAAAAHHHHHHH!!!) star in this Joe Eszterhas-penned William Friedkin directed erotic thriller about a detective Assistant District Attorney investigating his ex-girlfriend as a possible murderer. Aside being very well shot, and some really awesome car chases, this leaves something to be desired. The ending is also especially infuriating.

Jade made an abysmally low amount of money at the box office; $9 million total gross for a $50 million budget. This effectively killed David Caruso's movie career and stymied Friedkin's ability to work even more.

Some observations:

• Do check out some of the chase scenes on YouTube. If Friedkin is good at anything it's a chase scene.
• Some of the "kinky sex" shown in this film resembles the baffling fake sexual tips of Cosmo.
• Eszterhas's other flop Showgirls (which we've also reviewed) came out a mere three weeks before Jade. You think this effected some of the reviews?

Arrested Development Season 4 Is Relevant to Our Interests

Unless you've been trapped inside of a rock due to a failed magic trick, you must have heard that Netflix released Arrested Development Season 4 in its entirety over the weekend. While the return of a long-canceled sit-com is not normally the domain of YSM, this season has one bit that's particularly relevant to our interests. Mild Spoiler alert after cut:

What, they couldn't get Mike?

Podcast: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

Take a ride with Chris and Nick through the streets of Tokyo as 30 year old teenager Sean (Lucas Black) learns the ins and outs of balding his tires with ruthless efficiency in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Bow Wow appears as a normal teenager who deals not drugs and Sonny Chiba classes up this movie about ten fold. Also Brad from Home Improvement plays the most convincing teenager of the whole bunch.

Other notes:

• In case you wanted to know more about the Fast and Furious chronology, and have it explained to you entirely in exclamation pointed sentences.
• Sonny Chiba is great and here's a clip from The Streetfighter to prove it to you.
• Check out our Halloween III review to learn more about Muldoon's.

Podcast: Barbarian Queen (1985)

Get ready for some ancient Roman sword and sandal fun! Except for, of course, the 25 minute rape torture dungeon lull in the third act. It's Roger Cormon's Red Sonja ripoff Barbarian Queen! Starring Phil Spector's murder victim (Lana Clarkson) the Queen embarks on an ill-conceived mission to avenge her village's destruction and rescue her fiance Argan.

The trailer is NSFW.

On the way she encounters a bunch of guys who attempt/succeed in raping her. Luckily her kegel skills help her out of a few torture-chamber-related jams. She also meets the daughter of the resistance leader, and she bears a striking resemblance to the son from Mrs. Doubtfire.

Matthew Lawrence or girl from Barbarian Queen? You Decide.

Some other notes:

• Chris remembers the names of tertiary characters from Masters of the Universe.
• Tarantino, remember to call us so we can improve the script for this movie.
• Ways to make BQ better: 40% more consensual sex, add a love story, incorporate the rebels more, bawdy burlesque show.

Podcast: Gabriel Over the White House (1933)

Journey with us, gentle listener, as we go back to a simpler time. A more wholesome time. A time before Hollywood had put the Hays Code into force. A time when America looked for a hero to create jobs, put an end to gangsterism, and finally shut down Congress once and for all! In 1933 MGM gave us such a hero in Gabriel Over the White House, the stirring story of a man getting hit on the head and hearing angelic voices that tell him to heroically bully his way into becoming a benevolent dictator.

Join Nick and I as we go back to the halcyon days when the president literally goes mad and then gets a lot of power, and is seen as a beneficent hero by almost all non-gangsters.

The advantage of a movie so old is you can watch the whole damn thing on YouTube! The full version is here:


Notes:

• Nick apologizes for his slightly offensive 1930s style African American gentleman's voice, but the movie started it! It's a commentary on the limited movie roles for African American actors in the first half of the 20th century.
• While President Hammond does talk of annihilating death rays, there is no mention of giant mecha robots, a la Metal Wolf Chaos.
• Some information on Pre-Code Hollywood i.e. the FUN Hollywood before couples slept in separate beds and people could flush toilets in movies (I presume).

Grantland Article Covers Super Mario Bros. Film

Today on Grantland, Karina Longworth has written an amazing piece on what exactly went wrong on the infamous flop "Super Mario Bros.," a movie we've reviewed here during our video game month all the way back in January 2011 (feels like yesterday). For those who haven't seen the movie, it's a bizarrely uneven mash-up of Blade Runner dystopian sci-fi, references to several video-games, almost all of them completely re-envisioned, and jokes about tacky Italian women. Amazingly, the Italian jokes still feel pretty current. The article talks about what went wrong, how a character with huge brand recognition failed so spectacularly at the box office. I theorized about its failings a bit in my review, but I think what it comes down to is: people like Mario games because they are fun. People did not like the Mario Bros. movie because it is the direct opposite of fun. It falls into the trap of other prequels in that it spends way too much time explaining how the things you know came to be, and almost no time being a fun, compelling story. It even teases us with an ending that seems to promise a fun, action-heavy sequel.

Critics correctly identified the movie as "dumb," but thought it would still be a hit because kids must like dumb stuff, right? Except that the bleak set design, posters, and everything else seemed to be explicitly trying to distance the movie from the source material. In a hilarious disconnect between children who liked Mario and adults talking about Mario, NYT critic Michael Specter wrote:


"The city, a future-shock melding of Times Square and downtown, is called Dinohattan. And the despot, the evil King Koopa, has to find a way to merge the rest of New York -- which was sheared off from Dinohattan in a meteor blast 65 million years earlier -- with his desiccated, reptilian empire.

Does any of this sound familiar?

If so, you are probably a 12-year-old boy, or one of the many Super Mario maniacs who sometimes act like 12-year-olds boys."

For the record, no, that doesn't sound familiar. Except for "King Koopa," none of that sounded like anything anyone had ever associated with "Mario." Honestly I think I would have liked Mario Bros. the movie a lot more if it were just a dumb, silly little movie about heroic plumbers, instead of some sort of bleak sci-fi prequel.