Sometimes you really have to sit down and make a list of reasons not to put out your own eyes and throw them at strangers. My most recent experience with this kind of self-destructive depression came after watching both versions of _Angels in the Outfield._ I had seen the 90s remake as a kid—I’ve been an Angels fan since I was a tiny kid in California—and it filled me with a burning rage even then. The worst part of this terrible movie is the same now as it was then; the impossible dream is that the Angels would win the pennant. The World Series is never mentioned, even after the triumphant finale—clearly the Angels go on the blow the next however many games and return home in disgrace.

Both movies are terrible; small orphans wish with all their small, sad hearts for the home team to do well. Roger, the adorable child who stars in the remake, isn’t technically an orphan—his mother is dead and his father is a nogoodnik who has gotten on his Harley and taken off for Canada. The players are mostly goofballs who weigh five hundred pounds or have huge ears and no sense or are four feet tall or whatever.  Here’s a thing you may already know: when your team sucks, it isn’t funny. Yes, the Angels sucked for most of my life so far, but it was never funny, it was heartbreaking—watching people have a good laugh at our expense really just makes me a bitter and violent peazel. It’s not even just this fucking Disney movie—the year we won the World Series, they called it the ‘Cinderella Series.’ Fuck you!

In preparation for this review, I went to two games this week: Sunday I saw the Cardinals and Giants at Busch Stadium and Friday, the Royals and Jays at Kaufman Stadium. The Cardinals game was a lot of fun—sure, they got blown out, but it was a gorgeous day and the St. Louis fans are as good-natured a crowd as you’ll find anywhere. Even when the home team was well behind, good plays got applause, and nobody really got heckled. Royals fans, on the other hand, are big assholes. At least where we were sitting, everyone in shouting distance was, well, shouting—at one point, some jackass behind me screamed at the [black] batter that he’d trade him for a bucket of chicken. That was a Royals batter, by the way—they screamed at the home team, they screamed at the Jays, and they drank crappy beer like tomorrow would never come. I can only hope that in fact they never saw another dawn.

I like baseball, I honestly do, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a baseball movie that I’ve liked. _Field of Dreams,_ that Lou Gehrig one with Jimmy Stewart, not _Eight Men Out,_ and certainly not these _Angels_ movies. I hate heartwarming shit in general, which may be part of the problem, but I have to believe that there’s a baseball movie out there that I’d like—maybe one with more baseball and less big-eyed child. Oh yeah—I saw _A League of Their Own,_ too. yeech.

I was going to continue this review, but I’m feeling kind of sick. I blame these terrible, terrible movies.

3 of 10 stars.

Recommended for: People who have jewelry which features angels.

 

 

I have to break character for a minute here. I had planned to write a long tirade about French Canadians and how much I hate them, illustrated perhaps with badly photoshopped pictures of Denys Arcand fellating the queen of France. Alas, the movie is so bad, and has pissed me off so completely, that I find myself forced to write something like a real review.

It seems painfully clear that directors get some kind of societal bonus points for making anti-Christian movies. I’m a Kevin Smith fan—I even have both of his Green Arrow collections—but I’m sorry, Dogma was not better than Mallrats. It’s like reviewers start out giving movies five extra points if there’s a child-molesting priest or intolerant parishioner involved. Full disclosure, I’m a Catholic myself, but fer goshsakes: you do not get special credit for bashing organized religion in your piece-of-shit movie. I’m looking at you, Arcand, you maple-snorting, joual-talking cock monkey.

I don’t know whether he’s going to mention it himself, so here’s a little more full disclosure; my esteemed collaborator is Canadian. That’s why he picked this fucking movie—he’s just longing for there to be some kind of cinema canadian that he can be proud of . . . I think. There are good Canadian directors—I hear that David Cronenburg is a talented sum’bitch, and Guy Madden is a fucking genius—but come on, Canada, it’s not like you guys have some kind of vital “scene.” Shit, maybe there’s some kind of unofficial limit on how many talents you can have up there in Moosejaw: number of worthwhile Canadian directors, 2; number of Canadian authors you wouldn’t be wasting your time if you read, also two (Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro). And hey, massive coincidence time! None of these talented persons are from the land of milk and insular horseshit, Franada!

Right, Right, the movie. [sighs] Okay. I really don’t have any beef with the idea of ‘modern-day Jesus movie’; obviously you’d want to put in a bunch of parallels to the life of real Jesus, and it’s hard to pass up the low-hanging fruit of commentary on modern society. Fine. Montreal Jesus, tho, thinks that it’s funny. Bad news, allophone assface: you are desperately unfunny. When pretentious, self-aware, jerky actors start to quote the lyrics of a Doris Day song, it’s so far from funny that your humble reviewer was treated to a double take. Wait—humma-wha? That—was that supposed to be funny? The parallels between the Jesuses vary from the labored to the suspiciously absent; when it would detract from the purity of our hero . . . es, we get to skip them. I’m kind of grateful that we don’t see pudgy porn actor betray hippie Jesus three times before the cock crows, the absence of any such unflattering parallels makes me cranky. As for the worst parallel included, it’s a tossup in my book: Satan the entertainment lawyer or hippie Jesus getting his girlfriend fired? The Satan episode wasn’t too bad at first—a pointy-faced entertainment lawyer offers to help hippie Jesus get famous and rich, fine. He’s even got a ho dressed like a birthday cake, possibly my favorite character in the movie. The whole thing made me actually start screaming at the television, however, when Barrister Satan draws hippie Jesus over to a window overlooking downtown Cheesetown and says shit like “See the city? All this could be yours if you just fall to your knees and worship godless capitalism!” Yeah, thanks, movie—I need this kind of subtlety like I need an anal probe. The other parallel makes the cut because it seems actually retarded: while Solicitor Satan is ground into your face like some kind of hellacious spa treatment, it’s not an unreasonable mety-for. Bachelor number two, however, makes no goddamn sense at all. Mary prostitute, commercial artist and eighties waif, is trying to get hired to do a commercial for some kind of lameass bière québécois de la langue française and the producers ask her to take her top off and display her talent. She’s mildly reluctant, but when she complies, hippie Jesus totally loses his shit—he starts flipping over tables and smashing microwaves. Here’s the thing: not to get overtly theological on your collective ass, but when Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychangers at the temple, he was filled with a righteous anger because these merchants were taking advantage of the devout, profiting off of the desire of all good Jews to worship at the temple and obey the laws set forth in the Torah. Hippie Jesus flipped out because his girlfriend was willing to sell her sexuality in some mild way, but was required to demonstrate its existence by her potential employers. Show me the actual parallel here, you self-righteous, Bill 101-venerating cockbite.

Perhaps the part of the movie that makes me the angriest is, well, the plot: hippie Jesus and his asshole friends are hired by the Catholic Church to perform a religious play on Church property. They write some kind of anti-religious bullshit-a-thon. The priest pulls them aside and says “Look, guys. We’re really not paying you to shit on our faith at our house—let’s make some changes, okay?” They mock him and refuse—he fires them in a benevolent, priestly (if somewhat irritated) fashion, they trespass, security guards try to throw them out, and hippie Jesus sustains a fatal head injury at the hands of a theatergoer. The part I’m leaving out, of course, is the way we’re being ordered to think of the Church—Arcand’s summary would look more like this: “hippie Jesus and his asshole friends are hired by the SUPER HYPOCRITICAL AND UNPLEASANT Catholic Church to perform a SHALLOW religious play on SELFISH Church property. They write some kind of FANTASTIC ART anti-religious bullshit-a-thon. The priest pulls them aside and says “RAR, I AM A MONSTER!! YOUR ART IS FOR THE FIRE! WE USED TO BURN PEOPLE, AND I WISH WE COULD NOW!!Look, guys. We’re really not paying you to shit on our faith at our house—let’s make some changes, okay?” They mock him and NOBLY refuse—he fires LIKE THE HYPOCRITIAL, SMALL-MINDED SHIT THAT HE IS them in a benevolent, priestly (if somewhat irritated) fashion, they NOBLY CARRY ON WITH THE ART BUSINESS trespass, security guards try to throw them out, and hippie Jesus sustains a fatal head injury at the hands of a theatergoer BUT THE CHURCH IS RESPONSIBLE REALLY.”

[rubs face] Look, more full disclosure: earlier this week, I watched this movie called The Mission: it was fucking amazing, and dealt with the potential problems of organized religion and the ugly bits of Catholic history in an insightful, passionate, overwhelmingly beautiful way. It wasn’t funny—it had that in common with Jesus of Montreal—but it wasn’t trying to be funny. That’s where the comparison falls apart. Also, just to be nitpicky, I was distracted throughout Hippie Jesus by the really terrible job done with the subtitles—things were mistranslated or ignored in every conversation. At one point, most people are speaking English, and none of the French is subtitled at all. Lazy assholes.

In conclusion, Denys Arcand, fuck you and your Révolution tranquille. No stars.

Recommended for: Graham Christie.

 
So, as I understand it, there are basically four different positions in football—throw man, catch man, run man, and hit people man. Also, somebody kicks sometimes, but not very often. I was expecting the next sentence of this review to be something like “My understanding of this American pastime was infinitely enriched by my experience of Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait,” but instead, we’re looking at something like “And after watching Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait, I can confidently state that the game is boring as shit under all circumstances.” I mean, they have like one hundred dudes on a team, and they all get paid, and they don’t play very long at a time. Some of them get paid as much as Warren Beatty! 

Full disclosure: I have been to football games. One time I got frostbite. Every time, according to the peanut gallery, I was a grumbly pain in the ass. I’m not a massive sports fan, but I do like some sports—I like baseball, I like hockey although I don’t really understand it yet [did recently purchase a Canadian children’s book on the subject, tho, so look out!], soccer and basketball bore the crap out of me but I quietly admire their whatever, and the Olympics are a good idea. 

Before watching this movie, I thought that Warren Beatty was a good-looking person—I hadn’t ever seen the man, but I read Doonesbury and so I assumed that anybody who dated hordes of babes must be good-looking—but in fact he looks that that creepy man from Little House on the Prairie. 

All I’m saying is, I hope my guardian angel isn’t British and creepy. 

Okay, so when I was a kid, I watched this movie that I’ve been trying to find ever since—there’s some kind of African palace-y thing, and everyone dressed like British safari morons, and I think the palace came down at the end. Anyway—Warren Beatty qua Mr Millions dressed like the hero of that movie, whatever it was. 

Against my better instincts, I’ve been reading more Gor books since my last review, and sure enough, they’re informing this review as well as that past one. This film has a sassy British frump-dyke—my co-conspirator claims that she’s supposed to be hot—and I keep imagining her giving a creepy Gorean monologue as her clothes are cut off of her by heroic rapists. Like, say, Warren Beatty. Hey!
“When I arrived on Farnsworth, I knew that I was a free and independent woman, that I had power over men. How foolish I was! I had been indoctrinated, trained, propagandized, by a society that feared its own sexuality and biological destiny. I had always been proud of my ability to refuse men, of my coldness; I sometimes believe that British women compete in frigidity because they despise their sex. We are despicable! Only when I found my true master, on Farnsworth, did I truly learn what it is to be a woman! I cannot say whether all women are naturally slaves, they must each ask themselves that secret, and look into their own hearts, all I know is that this slave was born a slave and can only be fulfilled by a true master. As a bond girl, I was no longer allowed to be old; I was truly a hot little slave, an insatiable slut, and my master has forced me to realize this truth, to admit it to myself, and to cry it out to him. Only in bondage have I found true mental liberation, a sense of freedom that I never could have imagined as a free woman. I can only hope for all my British sisters that they find their masters, and the happiness that I have found here on Farnsworth.” 

It turns out that football is exactly what I thought—it’s really boring and depends heavily on fad diets and clichés. 

Julie looked frightened. “Might this slave know what is her master’s desire?”
Warren of Beatty scowled. “Serve paga, bond girl.”
Julie knelt before Warren, pouring him a goblet of wine. Never daring to meet his eyes, she offered him the goblet. He ignored her. She kissed the goblet, then, nervously, offered it again to her master; he accepted it, and tears of gratitude came to her eyes. When he had finished the wine, Warren of Beatty turned to her again. “I now demand of my slave the second wine.”
Julie bit her lip. “The second wine?” She did not know what the second wine, the wine of her slavery, might be. Warren of Beatty looked disgusted. He turned away from his miserable slave and made as though to go to his furs alone. Julie stretched out a hand to him, impulsively, pleading. “Master, please! Teach this miserable slave how to please you! Teach her of the second wine!”
Warren looked back at her, and seemed to be considering her request. “Does the slave sincerely wish to please her master? Does she know her duty?”
“Her duty—her duty is to look beautiful and please free men!” she blurted out. Smiling savagely, Warren of Beatty took her by her hair and dragged her to his furs, where I simply cannot follow. Sorry, constant reader.