Greetings, America! I hope you enjoyed the trip and didn't encounter any disturbing horse porn on your way over. We're here, as we always are, time without end, to lend a judging hand as Hollywood turns its head and coughs up another week's worth of ripe, ripe shwag. So let's waste no more time before scraping together Hollywood's best efforts with the side of a credit card and exposing them to the cold, cold light of day, shall we?


In Theaters Now:

House of Flying Buggers
The most depressing of the many downsides to the recent kung-fu swordfighting movie epidemic has been the new life breathed into the unfortunate "Redneck Karate" subgenre. Aimed at audiences who like powerful ass-kicking without all the mystical crap or Chinese people, Redneck Karate has been a stain on the Martial Arts movie landscape since Chuck Norris slithered off his cross-training machine long enough to White up the screen in 1972's Killninja. Long the unofficial Redneck American ambassador to the East, Norris' throne was usurped by the slightly less redneckish Steven Seagal in the 90's, thanks to Seagal's having worked in a Chinese restaurant for a while and having seen The Karate Kid twice, thus trumping Norris' highly-misinformed and offensive sense of "karate."

Now that the "Magic Flying Crap" genre of Martial Arts films has captured the public's imagination, the redneck nation has responded with the first "Magic Flying Redneck Karate Crap" hybrid, a monumental birth that should be celebrated by burning all remaining film negatives and promotional materials, immediately. If you thought it was painful to watch guys who don't know karate doing karate, try watching guys who don't know karate or flying, flying around and doing karate. I promise you'll kill someone soon.

The Life Aquatic with Vanilla Zissou
Who keeps giving this guy money to make movies? Vanilla Ice, I mean. He must have compromising photos of somebody important; which is likely since any photos with him in them at all would qualify. Thus the high price sometimes extracted for posing for a photo with a loser during his fifteen minutes of fame. Never before has such a one-hit wonder extorted so much from his momentary success, holding audiences hostage over the years through his various insane ego-boosting exercises like Vanilla Sky and Vanillas in the Mist.

Now he's back to claim his dubious fame once again, this time by snookering the easily-led into believing that Vanilla Ice spent most of his youth as a groundbreaking underwater adventurer. Flexing his impressive muscles for co-opting the hard work of others, Ice stretches it out this time to claim that he invented the submarine, and discovered the dolphin and the ocean, of all things. At least he didn't say he invented the ocean. I give this film two stars, and only offer that many in hopes that it will get Vanilla Ice's attention long enough for him to poke his head up, so I can sock it with my whack-a-mole mallet.

Ocean's Twelve
Everyone has a tendency to lie about their age as they get older, and aging pop stars are no different. Neither are aging one-hit wonders or largely forgotten hacks like Billy Ocean, who recently celebrated his 50th birthday by releasing a movie about how he's actually only twelve. Call it a "Caribbean Dream" or a pathetic fantasy, either way Billy Ocean's got you talking about him again. Suckers.

Ocean has always done everything to excess, including the time he wore a Velcro tuxedo to the Grammies in 1986 and got stuck to Tito Jackson's afro for the better part of a harrowing hour and a half, before a celebrity volunteer fire department could cut him free with an acetylene blowtorch. And Ocean's excessively bland cocktail parties are the stuff of Hollywood legend. But this time Ocean may have gone too far in his going too far. Even in a town whose inhabitants are routinely constructed mostly of age-defying Mylar polymers, nobody in their or anyone else's right mind is going to believe that Ocean's twelve. The movie itself is nothing but an expensive embarrassment, although it did land Ocean an invite to the Neverland Ranch.

And this is where the conga line stops, America. Hope you got yourself a good hip shake and a pat-down from someone vaguely attractive. And for those of you who kept banging the back of your heads on the floor, that's the limbo, stupids. We'll be back in this spot in another two weeks, so mark your calendars and put that baking potato in the oven now.

December 6, 2004
Welcome back to the first Orson Welch column of the holiday season, my friends. It should come as no shock that I reject all holidays as artifices of organized religion, and Thanksgiving is nothing more than an attempt gloat stolen land over the... (12/6/04)

November 29, 2004
Well fancy that, America. If I've ever seen anything fancier, I failed to be adequately impressed and eventually forgot that I saw it. Maybe I have a problem. But there's no time for that right now, Hollywood's been cranking out the skank while we... (11/29/04)

November 15, 2004
Good evening, movie-going masses. I really enjoy CGI-animated movies. Maybe that's not true, but I really enjoy I don't actually have to see Ben Affleck's face, I'm only forced to hear his grating voice. Still, I must ask, so I do not feel alone on... (11/15/04)

November 1, 2004
Yoho, America. It hasn't exactly been a pirate's life for Roland McS lately, though I did get seasick the other day after taking a nap on a friend's waterbed. Okay, you caught me in a lie there; I didn't actually know the guy. But this isn't a... (11/1/04)

October 18, 2004
Good morrow, gentlefolk. I have just returned from my bi-monthly excursion to the Clatterton, New Jersey Renaissance Festival and I mourn the loss of medieval times. Even more so, I curse the inventions of televisions and motion pictures. What... (10/18/04)