The World’s First President, And His Ability To Get Me Laid

HE DONE DEED EEEEEET

So it has finally come to pass: an African-American former imbiber of cocaine has ascended to the highest office in the most powerful nation on Earth, riding an insurmountable wave of global popularity the likes of which has not been seen since Michael Jackson turned inexplicably white and people around the world, unsure as to how to feel about racial ambiguity on such a famous entertainment commodity, decided to throw money at, and faint at the sight of, him.

The speech was blah. The poem that came after it, even more so. Yo Yo Ma does not qualify for a culturally diverse modern take on the American Presidential Inauguration Ceremony. DJ Premier would have been nice. Sen. Feinstein, please take note and go kill yourself, you boring hag. I didn’t hang around the TV long enough to catch the parade, but I’m sure no one’s going to blow anything up so I don’t feel inclined to get dressed and go back downstairs.

Why is Barack Obama the world’s first president? Apart from the fact all the other US presidents fit the racial profile for someone likely to yell out “I will conquer your lands, burn your fields, trivialise your ancient monarchy and gleefully impregnate your women”, you have to understand that up until Ronald Reagan, the US was a contender for the I  Pwn You Fucks Now Award, racing neck to neck with the Soviet Union. A man with a map on his forehead has inherent zomg points, and even a bland former actor with a wife clad perpetually in red would, and did, have a hard time at it. Bill Clinton was the first “black” president, meaning that while he meant well, it was just another case of Elvis getting the props Chubby Checker rightfully deserved. He had a shot at being accepted worldwide, but cigars are an acquired taste. What about the Bushes? Senor Senior didn’t have enough time or charisma, and Little Nicky is oh come on now I really don’t want to talk about what a clusterfuck George W Bush is it’s tiring everyone’s already done it and he’s gone good riddance thank you.

Moving on. (Dot org. Ha!)

Barack Obama will not be perfect; far from it. If being half-black makes you perfect then Atmosphere would be pushing Lil Wayne numbers on Soundscan. It’s also not that he’s a “community organizer” slash closet socialist, although it’s high time World Socialism got a reboot in the one place that could actually make it work as Marx had intended. And it’s not because Obama is a charming, unaffected true-blue intellectual with the writing and public speaking chops to prove it, either. He’s just the right person at the right time. Not stepped-forth-and-heard-the-words-from-a-flaming-bush right (see what I did there) but for a whole planet who’s been shitted on by a recalcitrant chemically imbalanced ignoramus, he’s the bowl of porridge our collective Goldilocks is creaming her pants over. If he was running against a sitting president who wasn’t being fed Nike crepes at high tea, he might not have made it. Obama’s air of  Harvard dryness would have put him in John Kerry territory if it wasn’t for the fact that Bush in ‘08 was the Antichrist and John McCain looked like dude who carried Saruman’s weed by association. And when did the people of the United States ever vote someone out of pure common sense? You people are just lucky that the sanest guy in last year’s elections also happened to be so. Damn. Sexxaaaayyyy.

So congratulations, Mr. Obama. And good luck, Rome America. Don’t shoot this one, okay?

Now, aren’t you ladies happy? Blow me.

Dipping One’s Ding Dong Into A Freshly Baked Pie Is Democratic. And Painful

nekkid.

There is no other reason for my return save the fact that Barack Hussein Obama is about to be anointed King of the World and everyone is about to be very happy for a few hours. In this time of need, someone must rise to the occasion and continue the time-honoured tradition of proclaiming that the emperor has no clothes. Even if the emperor is in fact President (elect) of the United States of America and, even in sunny Hawaii after what was undoubtedly a night of deplorable debauchery, has never been seen fully naked. Which is a blessing to all paparazzi, because as Bernie Mac put it, if he had whipped his dick out the whole room’d go dark.

But I digress. I’m back.

re: Max Payne the movie

Wrap a red sarong around my nether regions and call me an UMNO Exco member: I went to see Max Payne.

And Nostradamus can kiss my fat ass.

 

I'm an idiot.

The Max Payne Movie Will Be A Lobotomy: A Prediction

(Look, I know the movie’s dropped already. I just haven’t seen it yet. And maybe I’m trying to convince myself not to.)

I’ll be honest with you – the past month and a half or so has been not unlike the Olympics for me, just that the Olympics in this case is the US presidential election campaign, and instead of watching the Beijing hijinks in the comfort of my own timezone, I have to wake up at the asscrack of dawn – or not sleep at all, which is increasingly becoming the case, damn you – to catch a live debate on CNN so I can bob my head alternating between Obama trying not to snort derisively at yet another mention of Joe the Plumber and those squiggly lines at the bottom of the screen showing Ohio undecided voters playing Pong with their evisceral reactionometers. But why would a furriner even give a fuck? Because with the global economy on the verge of apocalyptic collapse (you might have to start sending out your simpleton son to sell a cow for some magic beans by next week) and two countries whose people worship God the same way I do being overrun by American troops, I just thought it would be good to know what exactly in the fuck is going on. The election campaign has been oft times depressing as all hell, and I’ve always wanted a green card and have been looking for ways to dampen the strength of my migratory desires, because there’s no way in hell a layabout Muslim with a goatee like me will be able to shack up in Brownsville and open up a bodega (ha! I passed a test somewhere with that one) any time soon. I might not want to live in the States anymore after seeing what you’ve put on CNN, gentlemen, plus you sold off Sedgwick & Cedar. Fuck you.

So let’s talk about Max Payne.

I love the video game. I loved it so much, the crappily plotted sequel was the first thing I installed into my my computer after Windows XP and the Internet Pr0n Password Generator. Max Payne the game was a bloody, smartly paced, cleverly metaphored distraction from a bloody, smartly paced, cleverly metaphored clusterfuck of a post-9/11 world situation. (Max Payne predicted that horrible things would come to a head in New York City. It was released in July 2001. Its depiction of NYC as being overrun by gangsters with cornball accents and junkies driven by their instiable lust for narcotics to anarchic overthrow of local government, however, is just overstating the obvious.) While it wasn’t the first game to have a crime noir feel to it, Max Payne used it best and used it wholesale, letting the whole gumshoe homicide cop mood permeate the entire narrative and gameplay. It used comic book flavoured cutscenes. The hero collected Panadol to get his life up (sorry, Americans – you might be more familiar with Advil.) Speaking of drugs, the particular strain of contraband narcotics central to the story, Valkyr, gets people homicidally insane and leads them to the belief that they’re ancient Viking martyrs. That’s a trip worth dodging bullets for. And the babes! Lola is the ultimate 80s action movie wingman with tits, and she’s a twin dagnabbit. We can also safely assume Max’s dead wife was attractive, since her being dead drove dude off the fucking cliff. Well yeah, his kid died too, but that just made him rue the missed opportunity to shell out a million dollars on the brat’s college fund – uh.

Anyway. The movie. I was caught unaware that there was a feature adaptation even in the works when I first saw the trailer a few months ago, but was put at ease by the similar visuals – I mean, I’ve never been to Noo Jawk, but I figure it takes some effort to make it look like that consistently. Wasilla can’t possibly look that bleak and all snowed-out. The trailer looked atmosphereic, moody, and a lot of other approving adjectives. But Mark Wahlberg. Mark. Wahlberg. Last time I saw him, he was referencing a block of wood in M Night Shyamalan’s The Happening (don’t ask me why I mentioned Shyamalan’s name before his movie; blame Hollywood. All his movies are M Night Shyamalan’s something or other. M Night Shyamalan’s Upskirt Video From TGI Friday’s The Other Night. Whatever.) Mark Wahlberg has been known to act, and act well, in certain instances, but his track record is about as consistent as a Sarah Palin testimony on Troopergate, and he almos never delivers in an action movie. Heck, his most potent stint to date was when he played a walking penis in Boogie Nights. He tried out drama in Perfect Storm but tanked. And he’s shown he’s not above picking dumbass scripts – Shooter, good God. And you really can’t affix an icon of Max Payne’s caliber onto an already iconic frame: Mark Wahlberg was Marky Mark. He is related to a goddamned New Kid On The Block. He sold Calvin Klein briefs on the strength of his protruding scholng. The one purely good thing he’s ever done as a human being was to pitch Entourage to HBO, and then to not fucking star in it. Max Payne needs a blank slate to be painted onto. I’m serious about mine, I’m so sincere.

Add to that already hefty grievance the fact that Max Payne is directed by John Moore, whose major claims to fame have been Behind Enemy Lines, his remake of the unremakeable The Omen, and Flight of the fucking Phoenix. Let’s go through that dubious list of accomplishments line by line, Obama national budget style: trying to turn Owen Wilson into an action hero (loosely based on a true story, no less) is just an exercise in please call me autistic; having one of the most iconic horror movies of the late 20th century dropped into your inbox is just a curse from Lucifer, and if anyone reading this remembers what the fuck Flight of the Phoenix was about apart from a single-digit IQ mashup of the last quarter of Con Air and Gilligan’s Island, please let a brother know. I don’t really want to know, I just want to know how many of my readers are dullards. AND. John Moore was slated to direct X-Men: The Last Stand, but was beaten to it by Brett Ratner.

Who the fuck gets edged out by Brett Ratner?

AND. Jim Bravura is played by Ludacris. How apt. In the most inappropriate way imaginable.

The only things that might persuade me to see this movie would be a) judging from the trailers, they got the atmosphere about right. Apart from the hokey Valkyries, the movie looks like a cutscene; and b) Mila Kunis. She was cute in That 70s Show, but was concrete boner inducing in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I would have splattered my monitor in spunk were it not for the fact that Seth Rogen kept poking his dumbass face into the frame every 5 seconds.

douche.

photoshopped douche.

5 Ways Eid Is Different From Christmas

So today is Eid ul Fitr, the Muslim festival marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadhan. As is customary, Muslims spend approximately the first quarter of the day performing a seasonal congregational prayer and asking for forgiveness from their kith and kin, and the rest of the day eating as much food as humanly possible while trying to avoid cardiac arrest, watching repeats of the American Music Awards and a Celebrity Circus or two, and showing off the new clothes they got on sale in Isetan. Children beg for money more often than usual on Eid, too.

I keep hearing the refrain, “So this Eid business is like the Islamic Christmas?” That would be a gross misrepresentation of the truth. Apart from the fact that both holidays are religious and are in accordance with the commandments of a Higher Power (or three Higher Powers, if you’re Catholic – always good to have consensus, Benny!) Eid and Christmas are about as similar as two cousins who grew up on different sides of Berlin during the Cold War: one is widely accepted by the West and receives massive amounts of media coverage and propaganda appropriation, while the other stays hidden behind a secretive, often paranoid culture that believes anything on TV is The Great Satan exhorting you to run naked in the streets pawning your morals and spritual fortitude for a Big Mac, a pair of Nike Air Force Ones and an iPhone.

(Actually, this is not a fair analogy. Many Muslims go crazy over a pair of Force Ones.)

I’m all set to have an especially crappy Eid this year, so I thought it appropos to share the wealth, as it were, with the rest of you. Here are 5 ways Eid is different from Christmas:

We Don’t Have A Santa Claus Equivalent

Muslims never got round to inventing a jolly old man in red burlap with a town full of male gnomes (they’re like Smurfs, but they have a shift system in place, and Papa smurf is about seven times larger than them) with a crack team of reindeer airmen and a sack of product placements. Not that Santa has no link whatsoever to actual Christian history: Saint Nicholas the Wondermaker, the basis of the Santa Claus myth, was so revered in Russia, for instance, that the saying goes, “If God dies, at least we’ll still have St. Nicholas.” In Islam, if you start any sentence with the phrase “If God dies”, you die. In Santa’s stead, we have that much more down to earth giver of gifts, the parent. Which is a blessing and a curse, because while you can nag your own personal Santa all damn year long for that limited edition Halo 3 Xbox 360, he also knows if you’ve been naughty or nice for real, and might only get you said Xbox 360 in exchange for chores or taking his side when he wants to get a second wife. Presents are for pussies, anyway – we Muslims prefer the broad independence of personal choice afforded by large quantities of hard cash.

Close, but no hookah.

Fuck A Christmas Turkey

Yes, yes, I’m sure Christmas brings with it all sorts of culinary delights – roast turkey, pudding, eggnog, candy canes, copious amounts of liqour (speaking of liqour … read on) – but Eid, like Islamic culture in general, is universally adaptable and therefore plays host to about 164 different festive menus. To illustrate a point: just in Malaysia, an Eid feast could consist of two different kinds of beef rendang (it’s like stew, but with a lot of things you would probably never think to put in a stew, and it looks like something that came out a rhino’s anus), ketupat (glutinous or regular rice cakes cooked in packets made of palas leaves; don’t ask me why we do this, we just like to be inconvenienced), about three quarters of the world’s known biscuit recipes, most of them involving pineapple jam, cashew nuts and buttered flour made to look like crumbly Mr Softees; and the notorious dodol, a sticky, black molasses made of cane sugar, coconut milk and the scourge of Western civilization, the durian. That’s one menu from one state in one country that’s got Muslims in it. Malaysia has thirteen, each of which is smaller than Maine. We even have one that’s roughly the size of the Vatican City, and there aren’t even any Illuminati running around there to offset its size. We just have a lot more to eat than Christians do. We rock.

A rhino: "hunf hunf aaah."

Ashanti Has Never Released An Eid Album

…which all Muslims are eternally grateful to God Almighty for. We include a mention of thanks for that in our annual Eid prayers. I’m kidding, but not by much. In actual fact, Eid season does have its fair share of festive singles, but they’re so hit and miss – okay, most of them are just awful as all hell – that no one seems to notice anything new released for Eid release unless it’s a remake of a fifty year old Eid bossa nova single (yes) by someone who nearly won last year’s Akademi Fantasia (think American Idol, but with even less hope), in which case everyone pisses on it for being a disgrace to the spirit of the original, and two minutes later we all continue eating again. There are exceptions to this rule, though: M. Nasir’s Satu Hari Di Hari Raya (Any Given Celebration Day – hey, I tried sexying it up, so help me) is considered a modern classic, and national car manufacturer Proton’s early 90s jingle Berhati-hati Di Jalan Raya (Please Don’t Die When You Go Back To Your Village) – a jingle, mind you – is loved by all but the most hardhearted Malaysian Muslim. Even heathens love it!

Bing Crosby doesn't care about sand people.

People Don’t Get Drunk On Eid

Well, not usually. Some of you infidels might know that Islam forbids the consumption of alcohol, and the rule is such a big deal, you can’t even knock back a Bud Lite on a holiday. While sports is on. You might want to call us uncivilized for that, but bear in mind that as a people we wouldn’t allow a harlot like Kimora Lee Simmons to live; who’s the filthy savage now huh huh? So instead of having a drunk Uncle Ralph fucking things up on Christmas day, stumbling in a pathetic sour mash stupor into the Christmas tree and trampling on Junior’s Watchmen action figures (a waste, anyway. I want those), you have Uncle Jamal stumbling around the house spilling F&N Orange Crush and knocking over a bowl of peanut sauce simply because he’s a dumbass.

In Zouk KL, however, this rule does not apply.

This does not happen during Eid. Unfortunately.

Eid Is Not Somebody’s Birthday

There’s a marked distinction when a people celebrates a religious holiday – or a holy day, if you’ll permit me to be anal about it – when it’s not to commemorate one person in particular. No offense to Hayzoos Christus (hey, we consider him one of our holy prophets, but we call him a different name) but Christmas facilitates a cult of personality while Eid is for the chirren. Like Wu-Tang. Another way to put it is this: Eid is Independence Day for all of creation under God, and Christmas is the celestial marking of Elvis Presley’s day of birth. People act differently. On Independence Day you talk about lofty ideals and your hopes for the future of all men while watching a repeat of ID4 on Cinemax, and conversely you sit around scarfing down pound cake, scraping it off commemorative plates with Elvis’s pelvis in mid-thrust on them for said honky’s birthday. July 4th is a day all Americans rejoice in (except for Black militants and Native Americans not currently holding any shares in the burgeoning Reservation Gambling-Industrial Complex) and January 8th is beloved only in Red States. Christmas is still cool, though. I get a lot of shit on Threadless for cheap right before Christmas.

I didn't redecorate my entire house for you.

… on a serious tip, though – Sa’idun Eid Mubarak. That’s Arabic for Happy Exalted Celebration, not Let’s Blow Shit Up Elelelelele. And Merry Christmas in advance, too.

Man. The debate sucked.

I’m a nice guy; the accomodating type. I do a lot of things that would safely fall under the category of “above and beyond the call of duty”, in as much as I have no duty at the moment, being a jobless 30 year old bum living with his parents. I hold open doors for women (who are of sufficient attractiveness that I may want to stand still in close proximity as they walk past me, allowing my above average height to partake of whatever cleavage they might have on tap that day), I generally allow people to overtake me on the highway (because I see a roadblock up ahead and you’re too busy singing along to Pop Shuvit’s ‘Marabahaya’ in your Zigen 5 Satria GTi to notice, you steaming turd) and I always let my friends taste my tom yam first – because it might suck. But in no other way is my sense of selflessness made more manifest than when I take time out to pay attention to the political climate of countries I have nothing at all to do with. In particular, for the past (geez has it been that long already) 2 years, the American presidential campaigns. The point where the candidates from the Republican and Democrat (word to Dub) parties meet in a live debate for the first time is usually what I look forward most to. I mean, if you can’t shit down your opponent’s throat on global TV, how the hell are you about to place dibs on the most powerful job vacancy in human civilization? I figure that shit should be at least as exciting as that Wrestlemania where Andre the Giant broke Hulk Hogan’s back, back in the day. At least. I mean, let’s consider what’s at stake here.

As it turned out, I was asleep when the debate was on air, and only got to see the rerun on *gasp* BBC and Al-Jazeera English. CNN Asia was alternating between a special discussion between 5 former State Secretaries (yawn. Every US SecState since Kissinger has been pro-let’sbombtheshitouttaeveryone, so there was no real debate) and the weather. I was really hoing this first of three debates would have have some guts flying around, because, you know – I’m a Muslim from Asia and there’s nothing we Muslim Asians love more than to see Americans suffering on live TV.

Shit was boring, son. It was so boring, in fact, that to stay awake I made these posters to pass the time, lest I switch back to CNN to see what the weather in Caracas is going to be like the next three days:

I’ll let you work out who’s who.

Look. Are you telling me Dhalsim and Akuma setting fire to a dissenting Congress wouldn’t totally advance the interests of the American people? Just imagine how swiftly the issues of extraordinary rendition and torture would be resolved if the Bison administration just sent everyone they didn’t like to goddamn Shadaloo? Plus, Ahmadinejad really does need the Psycho Crusher. I’m talking sense here. There’s a Washington Post daily column with my name on it, yall just need to start paying attention.

Bob Woodward, call me.

Fashion Fallout #1: Incarcerated Scarf Faces

Badass.

No, I am most definitely not a fan of the hipster rap aesthetic. The music might be good occasionally, as often happens with almost all other genres, but the look – no. NO. When De La did it, people, even smart people like De La, just didn’t know any better.

But hipster gear also jacked one of the most hardcore personifications of rebel gullyness (and you know I have a vested interest in maintaining high visual standards of rebellion); namely, the Palestinian Liberation Organization standard issue kaffiyeh, or checkered head scarf. Yasser Arafat, killer of innocent Zionist babies and about the only man I’ve seen walking up to the lectern at the UN General Assembly with a damn revolver on his belt, made it the epitome of unfuckwitability. So when scene kids and skinny jeans wearing born again rappers started putting it on, obviously certain sections of the Middle Eastern hardbody demographic took offense (word to Mazzi, don’t be blowing people up any time soon, ya smell me). I’m inclined to agree to a certain extent that things shouldn’t be ripped out of context to be appropriated towards cosmetic ends, pardon my Oxford.

Anyway. I get on NotCot after a few months’ hiatus and what do I see? You tell me what I see. This is from Salvor Projects’ site:

Hex Scarves. smh.

Oh yeah. The ironic cool cuts at me like poison-laced razorblades, no doubt. What do you think homegirls in Kandahar would have to say about this sorry shit?

"Make the call. It's about to go down."

This just in: The Guardian ran a story on Palestine’s only keffiyeh factory going out of business, despite the worldwide popularity of the scarves, because they can’t compete with Chinese imports. What the fucking fuck.

David Blaine Is A Menace and Must Be Stopped

Yes. And?

What gives? David Blaine has dared to do the impossible: hang upside-down 44 feet above the ground for 60 hours. Colour me underwhelmed. I never realized magicians were taking notes from beer-addled fraternity initiation rites.

Then I checked his wiki, which lists him as a magician and an “endurance artist”. Trekking to the North Pole and back without a thermos is endurance art. Swimming across the English Channel, while being an ass backwards stupid stunt to pull what with all the pollution white people eating curry with warm beer (not to mention frogs’ legs, on the other side) chuck into the ocean, is endurance art. Hanging upside down in New York City for a day and a half is losing a bet with Will Ferrell.

How do you lose a bet with Will Ferrell?

I like his street magic. I do. It’s a fresh take on the same old shit magicians who just can’t get over their inferiority complex vis a vis David Copperfield (who is evil incarnate, by the way) half-heartedly pull in tuxedos on a stage with a drawn red curtain and several dead pigeons under their draped high tables. That’s right – I saw The Prestige, and I can find no surmountable evidence to lead me to believe what Michael Caine and Wolverine and Batman showed about the vanishing birdcage is bullshit. So there. It’s inhumane. I’d rather see a coked up Armenian – I know he’s not Armenian, but he looks like he could hang with System Of A Down – and some well-paid “passersby” all pretend a man can levitate of the fucking sidewalk. That shitload of coins emerging from a bum’s coffee cup trick is pretty neat too. You pretty much know it’s all a sham, but you also marvel at the man’s technique – and yes, his deadpan gimme-an-ounce-please-I’ll-pay-you-next-week-I-swear expression. Shit is entertaining, son.

But his endurance stunts – man. Standing on a pole for 35 hours was cool, I’ll give him that. Freezing his ace of spades off in a block of ice? Sitting in a plastic box for a few days? Not so much. And now he’s hanging upside down for a day and a half – and he’s not even doing it for 60 hours straight.

*zip*

I just saw this shit. His Dive of Death, Leap of Lethality, Hop of Holyshitthisisembarrassing. Wait for 2:00.

Fuck saying anything else about this fool. Here’s David Blaine, for real:

The fuck outta here.

Worthless, Untimely Review #1: The Fourpeat

Living at home with your parents at age 30 with no steady job and an aging PC affords one with few lifestyle options. Thankfully for me, my Streamyx bill gets paid on time every month – at the expense of pretty much anything else I need to pay off – and www.66stage.com is one of those godsend streaming movie sites that cater to those who, like me, are the cinematic equivalent of the people who would park behind a garbage collection unit overflowing with the rotting carcasses of crows riddled with buckshot as sanctioned by KL City Hall rather than pay a buck fifty an hour to park inside a shopping mall. I just spent the last 24 hours watching, oh, about 4 and a half movies (one quarter movie – the link died and never came back to life; the other quarter was Semi-Pro, let’s not go there) and I feel the urge to get my Ebert on! Until such time when it bores me to do so, and I’ll stop writing. Meaning you get no more than about 150 words per movie. You hope.

The Incredible Hulk

It’s not as bad as people made it out to be. Then again, I didn’t pay to see it, and the snacks from my fridge > TGV popcorn with sortabutter. Edward Norton is a little too vacant as Bruce Banner; maybe he intended to characterize a seething temper being constantly kept under the lid, but he looks like he’s doing a fine Mark Wahlberg impersonation from The Happening. Liv Tyler can never hope to achieve the massive amount of sex appeal Jennifer Connelly has – I’ve never watched Ang Lee’s sadsack version of, and yet I know for a fact that the nubile little girl who stared down David Bowie’s bulbous groin has Betty Ross covered better than the offspring of a pair of imitation Mick Jagger lips. Tim Roth? A waste. He’s more effective when you give him some proper dialogue to spit in between the snarling grunts. In what is surely a blinding sign of this movie’s mediocrity, William Hurt surprised the shit out of me by pulling off a gruff, halfway badass General Ross. Seriously, he’s about the only good surprise in this movie. That’s not a good thing for a movie about a tantrum-throwing green giant the size of three Bob KU2s.

Oh this movie has a kickass Lou Ferrigno cameo. Thank God.

Still pwning all you sad fucks.

Hancock

You know what? I’m going to cut the closet Scientologist some slack and say that this one was pretty okay, although it suffered from gross mismarketing. I expected Hancock to be an out and out dark comedy – something Will Smith has done before on the 4th of July – but it’s not. Shit, I don’t know what it is. And I’m not sure if the producers knew either. So John Hancock is an asshole with superpowers living in Los Angeles (which probably makes him Steven Spielberg, but hey what do I know) and down-on-his-luck PR agent Jason Bateman tries to do a brother a solid and clean up Hancock’s image after said brother saves his ass from a trainwreck. And Charlize Theron’s in it too, usually with the only kid who’s in awe of Hancock’s ability to run up a 9 million dollar cleanup bill in minutes perilously close to one of her perfectly-shaped tits. Sigh. The ending is jarringly highminded and sappy, and there’s unnecessary detachment from what little sympathy you had for Big Willy when he tries to shit on the Arrested Development household. Sorry, that was a spoiler, sue me. The twist feels contrived and the injection of a paper-thin Achilles’ heel just left a bad taste in my mouth. And what the fuck – tornadoes?

Saving the fucking day.

Batman: Gotham Knight

There are three things going against this direct-to-DVD anime accompaniment to The Dark Knight:The Dark Knight, The Animatrix, and Justice League: The New Frontier, all of which took one look at Gotham Knight and disdainfully uttered a barely audible “pfeh”. I get that Warner Brothers has gotten comfortable with getting Japanese anime directors to do a wide-eyed, green-haired take on their blockbuster franchises, but this is a little too superficial to be truly significant. The Batman myth gets fleshed out nicely here and there, but it’s all a little too weak. “Cross Fire” was a throwaway filler short, and “Field Test” was … what? A gratuitious Lucius Fox insert? Come on. WB and DC has done some great work with Bruce Timm over the years, he shouldn’t be trying to play catch up to the Wachowski brothers. Plus, the Batmen depicted in all six shorts just look off. I know they’re stylized anime versions, goddamnit, I’m just saying. “Working Through The Pain”, written by 100 Bullets‘ Brian Azzarello is pretty good, though.

"Ka-Powie!!". In Japanese.

Apocalypto

Speaking of batshit, Mel Gibson’s masochistic follow-up to The Passion of The Christ is, anti-Semitic shitforbrains director aside, pretty awesome … up until you get to the partwhere the movie tries to wrap things up in a neat little box, complete with Indiana Jones style coincidences. Jaguar Paw is the heir to a small hunting tribe on the fringes of the Mayan jungle empire, when said empire lays the smackdown and kills, rapes and enslaves the village, selling the women as chattel and lining up the surviving men for ritual sacrifice. There’s a prophecy involved, and you just know Jaguar Paw is going to be in the middle of it, especially since The One in this case will “bring the jaguar” and the sun literally turns the fuck off just as homeboy’s about to get on the Kali Eat Your Heart Out Express. But the imagery is chilling, and although I still find it laughable that Mel Gibson tried to pull a Werner Herzog, he did an okay job given the circumstances, and by circumstances I mean the fact that South Park’s portrayal of him is actually tamer than actual fact. Like Passion, Apocalypto is acted out in a language no one speaks anymore, the better to cover up any wooden acting, although the Ronaldinho lookalike playing Jaguar Paw is pretty good nonetheless. The shit I really couldn’t take was the Rambo scenes towards the end, and the utter ridiculousness of having Jaguar Paw bear witness to not one, but two epoch-shattering events in Mayan history. It’s like he’s Forrest Gump in a loincloth. Oh wait that’s Cast Away. The girl with the prophecy was scary as all shit, though. Despite my undeniable machismo, I’m not ashamed to admit she made me pause for a second or two.

Destroyer of civilizations.

But man. Charlize Theron in Hancock.

What the hell are you doing here?

Hi. My name is Wan, and this is my blog. The game plan is to fill this shit up with funny anecdotes, but it all depends on how funny you think the anecdotes are, and if you define anecdotes as “sloppy cut and paste jobs and silly pictures from the net”. If Malaysian politics is a passion of yours, expect to have your passion raped in the left eye socket. If football’s your thing, rest easy. I’m leaving that shit sacrosanct. Except when I piss on prettyboy Cristiano Ronaldo for being a douche. Yay.

Let’s proceed shall we