Nerd Pride Radio

RAT FILM

This weird-as-hell documentary about the history of Baltimore's rat population, how much of city infrastructure is built around simply deterring rats, and how certain rat social experiments have become formally adopted into America's urban planning as applied to people really fucked me up.

That sounds interesting!

I watched a movie called Christmas Inheritance - or rather, this movie was playing for about an hour while I tried to teach my kid to make a hat and did some other things in the room that prevented finding the remote. At that point I had to carry the movie through to the finish just to know, as a matter of human curiosity.

This movie - and I use that term generously - is about a 20-something white woman from NYC who is set to inherit a multimillion dollar gifts and greetings company begun by her father. She is engaged to a hot guy who happens to be black (relevant later), but has earned a reputation for slutty, acrobatic behaviors at parties (not that I'm saying this is a bad thing, though the movie clearly implies that it is, and no, I am not making this up, because how could I?). Therefore, Daddy Warbucks needs to send her on a pilgrimage of Learning before passing the reins and cash to her.

The most idiotic, flimsy pretext imaginable is devised to send her to Smallsville USA where the family company started, where it always snows and the totally normal people do a lot of baking, which as we know is never done in Wicked New York City. There our heiress meets a ridiculous, loaf-like dork who runs the local Inn, and promptly lies to him about who she is, adopting a faux surname for the purpose and trying to blend in with the local culture by falsely claiming to be a baker. He finds her heartless - kind of like his previous Ladyfriend, another hardened NYC bitch who had the audacity to dump him at Christmastime for no reason other than her desire to no longer continue the relationship! Lord knows, we ladies need a better reason than our own whimsy to dump a Good Man, much less at the holidays! (Serious foreshadowing here... see breakup scene and the important reasons for it below.)

The moral journey of our Heiress begins when she witnesses the Loafman giving some small, meaningless charity to the Town Homeless Man, who spends his days on the One Block Street of the Small Town that is nevertheless economically thriving. This is too much generosity even for her, but she soon learns that even Homeless people need come indoors so that they don't literally freeze to death on very cold nights, and she is happy to invite this man into someone else's hotel to save him.

Stage two of her pilgrim's progress involves hitting up the local merchants for charitable donations to a silent auction, even though she could pawn her own watch or handbag and come up with more cash than is likely to be raised at this event. The important thing is that she's pretending to be one of the little people, and little people need to beg for charity from small business owners, just as homeless people need the spare change of loafpeople who run the local Inn but it's otherwise fine that they're standing out there homeless every day. If begging for charity also has the effect of impressing the loafman with her warm-heartedness, well, who ever said morally righteous action couldn't come with a side helping of selfish benefit?

Finally, the heiress' heart grows 3x like the Grinch's when she gives a teddybear - actually hands it over for free, no strings attached! - to a cute small white child who represents The Needy because her dad is away in the military and the family is experiencing a power outage in the snowstorm. The Loafman notices all of this and is duly impressed!

Right about this time, the Fiance of the Heiress shows up and is surprisingly impatient (or some might say, surprisingly patient) to find her clutching romantically onto the Loaf. He has been trying and failing to reach her for days now, although they are set to depart on a trip to Maui tomorrow. Now we can be sure this fiance is a Bad Man, because who the hell wants to go to Maui at Christmastime in the middle of a blizzard?! With his godlike driving abilities, the fiance has managed to make it across impassable roads in a BMW because he's worried sick about his fiancee being stuck in a snowstorm or maybe held captive for ransom, thus proving himself the only person in this entire movie worth actually dating or marrying. However, he displays a wicked, corrupt concern for his inability to obtain cell service in the small town, which heaven knows no small town ever should have.

A hilarious scene unfolds wherein the Heiress uncomfortably introduces her Fiance to the Loaf, but manages to ignore the only other person present, the black Town Sheriff who is twice as old as any of the others. When it becomes obvious that the Heiress is not going to rectify her astounding act of rudeness toward him, the Sheriff actually steps up and introduces himself to the Fiance in an apologetic tone. For a moment, the viewer half-expects the Sheriff to propose that the two of them hop into the Fiance's car and leave this stupid town in the dust forever, but alas, no. I do secretly and hopefully wonder if the actor who plays the Sheriff spontaneously inserted that introduction into the scene for his own amusement.

Anyway, left alone later with the human Loaf, the Fiance inadvertently refers to his Fiancee by her rightful, true birth surname, thus revealing her dishonest ruse. The Loaf's faith in womankind is shattered. No, he will no longer give a cutesy farewell to the Heiress, which puzzles her. Until... halfway back to the airport with her Fiance, she realizes that the Fiance has audaciously revealed her True Name and thereby hurt the Loafman. How dare he?! This engagement is OVER, and not a moment too soon!

She hops a bus back to Smallsville of the Snowy Christmas Cookies and revisits the Loaf, who has taken under reconsideration the wisdom of hitching his fortunes to those of a multimillionaire who may be the only person in the world stupider than he is. In short, he's for it now. Fin.

Not a REVIEW but just a exciting film I'm looking forward to watch but has anyone seen The Mephisto Waltz? Late 70s horror movie with Alan Alda? I have NEVER HEARD OF IT, looks cool, 4.99 on amazon, should make for a fun film

*EDIT*

I enjoyed it! I can easily see why the film got kind of a cult following after its release failed to impress. ALAN ALDA should do more horror movies!

The Big Sick

This is the movie starring one of my favorites from that Silicon Valley show, Kumail Nanjiani. It makes me want to see everything else he's in. Anyway, this is an at least somewhat-true story, which follows an attempt to negotiate the development of a new relationship with the difficulties of past or current lives to deal with. It's a great movie, really well done, with great supporting actors everywhere too. I did not cry as much watching this movie as I did watching Lion or a few others, but I did sob like a toddler whose dumdum was stolen through most of it. The first time their relationship hit a stumbling block the crying began, and at each successful big event from there, more and increased crying continued. But afterward it was not hard to right the ship again, whereas Lion will make you question everything about life and the crying recurs for days. So at least this is just small beans in comparison.

Unpossible. Ray Romano was specifically built out of spare parts that contained no funny essence whatsoever. This explains...his whole career.

It's sort of like when folks talk about Kurt Russel "acting". He just plays Kurt Russel.

Oh, he was hit in the face with boffer weapons repeatedly? He's definitely perfect for this, then.

He really is perfect in this role. I can't say why without spoilers.

For those of you who like cool cinematography or Dave Bautista, see BUSHWICK. It's a disaster movie with some really good performances from him and Brittany Snow.

I love Brittany Snow! She has been great ever since a child actor.

PRINCESS MONONOKE

My first time seeing it in theaters, as my local theater is doing Miyazaki Mondays. A timeless masterpiece. Both hyper-critical yet empathetic of man's harsh relationship with nature. Also: a TON of great ownage. My favorite anime.

"You say you're cursed, well so what? The whole damn world's cursed."

Saw Three Billboards last night. I think it's earned the awards hype it's gotten. It's dark, it's complex, it's funny. It even has a pretty good message that didn't feel like it was being hammered at me. Think I loved every minute of it.

Not sure if it qualifies as a movie, but here goes: “Batman and Bill,” on Hulu, is the fascinating and surprisingly touching story of the fight to get Bill Finger co-creator credit for Batman. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'm sure Black Panther is a fun movie, but it has "a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score" in exactly the same way Kim Jong-il got a hole-in-one the first time he tried playing golf.

ANNIHILATION

If you like weird-as-hell, unique sci-fi, check this out on the big screen if you get the opportunity. Some striking images I won't get out of my head for awhile.

Watched Aardman's latest "Early Man". It's good. I'll watch it again, as I do all their films, though currently think it doesn't reach the heights of their classics. Some damn fine jokes though.