Ticket Stubs #33: Sex Wax and Books on Tape

So, Thanksgiving has been a fun three days off for me. Plenty of gluttony and lethargy to go around, since we had enough turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, spinach souffle, cranberry sauce, biscuits, pumpkin pie, and (count 'em) two cheesecakes to last us a month (except for the pumpkin pie, turkey, and one cheesecake we polished off on our tryp to Phan--good morning, Vietnam! That was weird.... Moving on...). All was delicious, and with the limited TV selections, we had plenty of time to clean up the two weeks of TiVo recordings that piled up whilst my father insisted on watching yet another pile of pointless, talk-infused indie films he selected from Netflix. Apparently, Barack Obama is still our president, Niki Minaj appeared on the American Music Awards, f***ed to the upth power of up, and Christina Aguilera performed on The Voice, looking like an old, slutty version of Honey Boo-Boo.

In the upcoming sequel, Looper 2, Honey Boo-Boo is sent forward in time
to kill Christina Aguilera. Please don't let this come true like The Expendables did!

Now that I know how Oliver Queen must have felt after being rescued from that island after five years, only to discover the unjoys of Kim Kardashian and the Twilight Saga. Yes, I watch Arrow, and I like it--the fight scenes, at least. The acting is kinda horrible on the female side, but the flashback structure fits in well with today's serialized TV market, and anything comic book-related tends to tug my ear whether it turns out good or not. Today, we're taking another trip to May 12, 2005 (SW@ Ticket #37: Sex Wax, Sideways Stories, and the Star-Spanglish Banner), which featured exclusive horror (courtesy of San Diego State University's free movie screening organization, CASE), excessive drunkenness, and excellent comedy. Oh, yeah; there was sex, too.

First, SW@'s review of the CASE presentation of House of Wax. You know it'll be a good movie when you have to pass through a metal detector and have your backpack searched for cell phones and camera equipment. You know it'll be good when you oooh and ahh at the production company logos. You know it'll be good when the first previews are of Star Wars III and Batman Begins. Then it starts, and you're simultaneously creeped out and underwhelmed.
Having watched too many scary movies (including the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake of a few years ago), I had seen the abused-deformed-child-with-crazy-parents premise a few times before. Having seen too many zombie pictures (and the unrepresentative trailer of HoW, a re-make of a film I was unfamiliar with), I had expected the wax figures in the house to come alive and go on a murderous rampage at every second, both heightening and gradually dulling my sense of fear. What I did see was a shocking amount of gore (fear gradually sharpening); so many surprise pop-ups and loud noises that while I was waiting for something to happen at a particular time, something happened a little later or earlier than I expected, and I was scared anyway (a few times, I was actually scared by nothing happening); and so much sex and sexual humor (Paris Hilton on the big screen in her underwear, "dropping her lipstick" on her boyfriend's crotch, etc.) that I was distracted into laughter and arousal, and once again scared moments later. But basically, House of Wax was a wax "reimagining" (because "remake" isn't a cool word anymore) of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: deformed lunatic (think Waxface instead of Leatherface) and equally crazy brother move into small, off-the-map town, turn it into an overblown waxburbia, and kill out-of-towners who are just passing through. The current victims include Hilton, Elisha Cuthbert, and Chad Michael-Murray. On the way to a football game, their car is mysteriously sabotaged and they must go unwittingly into the wax town for help. These idiots split up every chance they can get, and are rewarded by being killed off every fifteen minutes--except for two survivors who manage to play hero and get the State police involved.
Great special effects on the House itself, scares that were actually scary, and Paris Hilton almost naked. Who could ask for more? Me! I know it makes the story progress, but why do scary movie characters have to be so stupid?
C+

Having already addressed Sideways in a previous Ticket Stubs, and saving Spanglish for another day, we now follow Sex Wax with a trilogy of Critical Quickies featuring books on tape (there's a heck of a retronym for you):

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter--Rufus Sewell, Dominic Cooper, Mary Elisabeth Winstead, Benjamin Walker. Don't recognize any names? I don't blame you and I don't care. Author/screenwriter/mash-up artist Seth Grahame-Smith does a respectable job adapting his book into this eponymous film (directed by Wanted's Timur Bekmambetov) which takes historical fiction to a new realm: having a young Abe Lincoln seek revenge against his family's vampiric assassins, a la the brothers Winchester in Supernatural (yes, I watch that, too). The fictional elements blend seamlessly with the historical, not feeling like the haphazard Franken-fable one might expect. The special effects, however, are nonsensical and cartoonishly, sometimes psychedelically awful. And what's up with that one squinty eye that comes and goes, Abe? Come on, be honest.
B-

Treasure Island--Eddie Izzard, Donald Sutherland, Elijah Wood. Izzard plays Long John Silver in this three hour TV epic based on the classic book. Impending mutiny and constantly shifting alliances bring life to an otherwise boorish nautical setting, and the moral of the story remains intact. Wood proves to be a terrible dramatic actor as traumatized survivor-turned-Treasure Island native Ben Gunn, but he's only in the movie for maybe ten minutes total, so who cares as long as you enjoy it as much as I did?
A-

Moby Dick--William Hurt, Ethan Hawke, Gillian Anderson, Donald Sutherland. Hurt is the whale-obsessed Captain Ahab in this (also three hour, but not quite as epic) TV adaptation of the classic novel. As hard to sit through on screen as it was to read the book's heavy-handed old-English prose, Moby Dick basically goes like this: Ahab gets crew, goes whaling, crew sees Moby Dick, Ahab orders them to pursue on insane course, crew muses on the possibility of engaging in mutiny, Ahab gets crew drunk, crew forgets mutiny, lather, rinse, repeat until Ahab and crew die. The whale was an impressive feat of CGI work and the film ended at some point, but those were the only highlights for me.
F

Speaking of mash-up artists, I (under the moniker DJ Timedrop) have been working on my Fort Modest mash-up album (that's Fort Minor vs Modest Mouse to those who don't know) for quite some time now, and have finally felt inspired to make further progress on the record after being stuck on the eighth track, "Kenji Bukowski," for several months. I begin work on "This Devil's Workday In Stereo" tonight, and will have some of my past mash-up work online in the near future. Stay tuned for the usual as I trot out more old horror movie reviews for the next issue of Ticket Stubs.