The Anaconda Ball Pit

If you hadn't already noticed, I can be a pretentious little dipshit sometimes, with my French New Wave films and "I just downloaded an Ornette Coleman bootleg" and "ooh-la-la, I'm reading some fucking 6th Century philosophy like a douchebag" routine. But really, I've yet to smother my inner child, that jean-jacket-wearing, Dukes of Hazzard/Smokey and the Bandit-loving, nose-turned-up-at-quiche little hick. And in that spirit, last night JCrammit, Kira-Lynn and I went to the opening night of Jackass 2.

In our defence, there's really no better way to see that movie than in a crowd of amped-up teenagers (mostly boys, of course), who'll hoot and cheer every time someone gets kicked in the nads; I know I wouldn't have laughed so much (and it was a lot - my face still hurts) if I was watching it in an empty theatre. Also, we'd missed our first choice, The Black Dahlia (which has been getting very unfavourable reviews, but has Scarlett Johanssen, so I'll give it a shot) and nobody else wanted to see Fearless.

One of the nice things about seeing a big, dumb movie is that it's preceded by trailers for other big, dumb movies; in this case, a could-be-good-but-probably-is-horrific-beyond-belief Christina Ricci/Samuel L Jackson thing called Black Snake Moan, the live-action Transformers, and the Borat film (and I'm happy to report that his appearance drew a few immediate cheers, which leads me to not completely despair over the state of the youth of our city). But the best, by which I mean the worst, was an exceptionally long trailer for The Grudge 2. For a start, the trailer made it clear that Sarah Michelle Gellar's character would be killed off early on, leading me to think that she probably wanted as little to do with the thing as humanly possible while still getting paid (not that Gellar's acting, such as it is, is much of a draw). But, and here's where going to the movies with a loose cannon like K-L pays off, the trailer makes many attempts to build the spooky atmosphere where the innocuous looks scary, but our guest starts yelling out "OMG THE CELLPHONE'S RINGING! I'M SO TERRIFIED!"*, and by the end of trailer, a good half of the crowd (clearly the film's target audience) was jeering and laughing.

As for the movie itself - whaddya want? Here's a quick run-down: Bam gets branded on his ass, Steve-O gets beer funnelled into his ass and puts a fishhook through his cheek (then kicks a shark in the head), Johnny Knoxville is hit by bulls at least 5 times, and some other guy whose name I don't remember drinks fresh horse semen (with the highly quotable follow-up comment, "Yep, that's come alright.") There are several scenes of vomiting, a couple of nasty snake bites, and a John Waters cameo. In a way, talking about it is much like reviewing pornography: kind of pointless, because its function is so different from the rest of filmed entertainment that the critic's role is reduced to saying if it does what it's supposed to (make you laugh, get you het up) and maybe listing a few of the acts performed.

We also tried watching DIG!, the Dandy Warhols/Brian Jonestown Massacre documentary, but Jess found Anton Newcombe too annoying to last more than 15 minutes. So, I get to watch that one on my own later - which works out nicely, because I've booked the week off for vacation. We're not busy at work, and I've built up almost a month's worth of vacation time over the last couple of years - in 2005, for instance, I only used 5 of my vacation days - so I figured I should take advantage of the government's largesse. Plans for the week: clean this place the fuck up (starting with the ugly pile of cables next to the computer); cook impressive dinners for my sweetie; finally finish off The Singing Detective and Dekalog; play Psychonauts until it hurts.

[This post's soundtrack: Eleventh Dream Day's Eighth (1997), and The Costello Show's King of America (1986), the latter of which I've owned for several years but have never, for some reason, listened to start-to-finish before. It's pretty good, but no Blood and Chocolate.]

*No, she doesn't actually speak in text-messaging abbreviations.