Mongo Nation

I recently went along with Ryan Rotten to Drac Studios to do a video for ShockTillYouDrop.com. Drac Studios is known as one of the best special effects houses in Hollywood, responsible for some of the most incredible animatronics and live SFX on film or television. We got to have a look at their workshop, which houses such classic characters as The Mask, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the robot Jesus from Passion of the Christ. We also interviewed Drac Creative Director Todd Tucker and Steven Goldman, Director of their first in-house studio production, “Trailer Park of Terror”…

The hype machine has to stop somewhere, right?

By Jeremy Azevedo

Due to the success of Transformers and the overwhelming hype surrounding the upcoming G.I. Joe movie, producers are no doubt snapping up licenses to 80s cartoons at an alarming rate…

But for every Thundercats or He-Man, there’s another franchise that has absolutely no business ever being made into a movie. Here’s a look at the bottom 5:

Bravestarr:

Yes, he does ride that horse, and yes, it is awkward.

Bravestarr essentially combines science fiction, westerns, racial stereotypes and Satanism into one tidy package. The plot revolves around a planet known as “New Texas” (naturally) upon which some valuable mineral known as “Kerium” is being mined by meek “prarie people” who seem to receive no visible benefit for their slave labor. Despite this fact, an alcoholic Native American sheriff known as Marshall Bravestarr is called into action to combat an evil menace (the antichrist, furries, prarie people who want a piece of the action, gay robots) over the fate of New Texas and it’s precious resources, armed with his shamanistic spirit animal powers and a sweet cowboy hat. This show also features a talking horse that stands on two legs and can shoot a rifle, which sort of defeats the purpose of being a horse in the first place. Additionally, this also makes everyone feel weird about it when Bravestarr rides on his back.

Likelihood of being adapted into a film: 1/1,000

Silverhawks/Tigersharks/Sectaurs/Dinosaucers

Piss-poor Thundercats clones: This is why we can’t have nice things.

As a result of the overwhelming popularity of Thundercats, everybody and their mother was scrambling to develop their own anamorphic superteam of humanimals to delight bloodthirsty warmongering children and also give furries something to fap to. The bastard spawn of this shameless cash-in resulted in militaristic teams of bird–people, sea creature-people, insect-people and dinosaur-people, all of which were comparatively short lived. I can’t remember a goddamn thing about any of them, really, other than that the only African American Silverhawk was named “Hotwing”, which is pretty funny by today’s standard for being borderline offensive.

Likelihood of being adapted into a film: 1/10,000 Read the rest of this entry →

1. An unidentified monster approaches! Do you:

A. Try to run away, but trip and fall at least a half-dozen times?

B. Aim for the head?

C. Break out the holy water and or/call an exorcist?

D. Slip and fall into a trap door, which leads to a small chamber filled with buzz saws and electric drills that are slowly closing in on you.

2. You come from work one day to find blood dripping down the walls of your house. The source of this phenomenon appears to be:

A. A decapitated babysitter.

B. A half eaten corpse.

C. The house itself!

D. The victim of a rusty, man-sized mousetrap made of razor blades and barbed wire.

3. While making out with your fellow camp counselor, you are startled by a strange noise from outside your cabin… You cautiously peek around the corner to investigate and are greeted with:

A. An axe in your face.

B. An infectious bite to the neck.

C. A g-g-g-g-ghost!

D. A detonator to the bomb that was secretly implanted in your girlfriend’s heart. If you don’t activate it within 60 seconds, your own heart will explode instead.

4. Your are unable to start your car! How come?

A. Duh, because there’s a robed hitchhiker clawing at your window, so of course you dropped your keys on the floor.

B. Duh, because there are so goddamn many of those things clawing at you through the windows that you can’t get the key into the ignition.

C. Duh, because your steering wheel just magically turned into a poisonous snake.

D. Duh, because it’s underwater, and you have two minutes to solve a riddle before you drown in it.

5. You are home alone late at night when your phone rings. Who is on the other line?

A. Not sure, but the call appears to be coming from inside your own home!

B. Not sure, but they keep groaning and talking about brains or something…

C. Your dead father, and he sounds good and pissed.

D. An unidentified voice that informs you that if you don’t eat your own face, you’re going to be torn apart by thousands of rabid bobcats.

QUIZ RESULTS AFTER THE JUMP! Read the rest of this entry →

My girlfriend says that Megan Fox is the only other woman besides Rose McGowan that she’d “scissor”. As soon as I look up what that means, I’ll tell you if that’s something cool or not…

Until then, please enjoy these pics of Megan Fox in a wet dress from the new movie “How To Lose Friend And Alienate People”!

Full Clip Right Here:

We were on location at the premiere of Season 4/Season 3 DVD release of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, one of the funniest shows currently on television. We asked some of the stars of the show about their experience working on the popular comedy program, a couple of rude personal questions and even one or two questions that had absolutely nothing to do with anything! I would say “that’s how we roll” but that would make me a douche, amirite? So just watch the goddamn video already!

Now with 100% less Kate Hudson!

By Jeremy Azevedo

A cursory glance at the big movies of the summer paints a very telling picture of the way roles are written for women in cinema these days…

Maybe the closest thing to a serious acting gig for a chick would be the recently released Woody Allen picture, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”, which appears to exist so that we can all watch Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz have a threesome with the guy from “No Country” because Woody Allen is finally too old to do it himself.

Javier and his friendos.

It seems like the days in which the “best actress” category at the Oscars (and their retarded stepbrother, the Golden Globes) were not a complete farce are long gone. Reese Witherspoon winning for sappy biopic like “Walk the Line”? Really? Or Hillary Swank for an over-promoted after school special like “Million Dollar Baby”? Jesus H. You have got to be kidding me. Where are all the serious actresses?

I, for one, am tired of all my movies being ruined by “actresses” that are perhaps better suited to print work, like Jessica Biel/Alba (same difference), pretentious broads like Kiera Knightly who over-value their own skill level, and bland TV actresses with no sex appeal like Katherine Hiegl. Who are this generation’s future legends? None of these women are likely to have a career that outlasts their 30th birthday.

Jessica Alba “acting” like a champion handjobbist.

With a little research I’ve come up with a list of ten actresses that may be just one great role away from timeless recognition. Or, at the very least, are reasonably tolerable. Read the rest of this entry →

Except for, like, most of them actually were…

By Jeremy Azevedo

It took me ages to get around to finishing this book, which has physically been through hell in a remarkable parallel to the stories contained within…

…This book has been lost, found, forgotten (due to the recent purchase of an Xbox 360), dropped into a toilet at a cabin in Big Bear, left outside to dry, been run over, gone camping, been sexually harassed by an older book on MySpace, and found out that it was adopted. Nevertheless, I proudly soldiered on so that I could pass along my opinion to the three or four of you out there that actually still read books. So without further ado, please enjoy the long awaited review of “The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies never Made”!

Originally published in 2002, David Hughes’ recently revised book, “The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made” is an exhaustively researched and immensely fascinating look into just how inept the studio system really is. Even when handed over an incredible story that really require very little embellishment, every single one of these films quickly spirals out of control, with numerous screenwriters pushing the story further and further out of context, budgets spiraling out of control, and a revolving door of star directors and actors collecting paychecks to talk about what could have been in interviews. The title of the book is a little misleading because most of these movies actually have been made by now. But it’s more about what the movies could have been than it is about incomplete projects.

A page from Kevin Smith’s lost Superman script (lovingly rendered in crayon), in which Superman saves NASCAR from a diabolical monkey and says the word “feltch” a lot.

What’s truly fascinating about some of these stories, each of which plays out like it’s own individual little spy novel, is how some of the scripts that fail have their carcasses stripped and re-purposed for other films. “Men in Black” was essentially all the best parts of “The Tourist”, minus the dark drama elements. Spielberg’s horror picture “Night Skies” became “E.T.”, of all things. “EL Topo” director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Dune” became David Lynch’s “Dune”. It becomes apparent to the reader how important and universal some of the themes in science fiction really are (as well as how difficult it can be to protect one’s intellectual property). Read the rest of this entry →

In Canada, it’s just Season Four

By Jeremy Azevedo

Kenny Vs Spenny may be one of the funniest shows I have ever seen. Granted, my tastes are considerably lowbrow, but I have to call it like I see it and this season of Kenny Vs Spenny had me damn near shitting my pants with laughter.

The premise of Kenny Vs Spenny is simple: two best friends enter into a series of friendly competitions that result in the loser being subjected to some kind of scarring humiliation. The competitions range from the obvious, like “who can blow the biggest fart” to the bizarre, like “who can be tied to a goat the longest”. The humiliations are almost always horrible, like making out with an old lady or rolling down a hill in a plastic ball filled with dog turds. No, I did not make that last part up.

These ten episodes were executive produced by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, which ratcheted up the humor in an already funny show. Kenny is such a dick and Spenny such a sad sack that you can’t help but suspend disbelief that some or all of the show may be staged and just enjoy the sadistic abuse levied upon poor Spenny. How “The Hills” became the de-facto pseudo-reality show when there’s something like Kenny Vs Spenny out there defies all logic. Read the rest of this entry →

Not quite what you would expect from Mike Judge…

By Jeremy Azevedo

I can vividly recall piling into the car with three or four other kids as a teenager, passing a doobie around on the way to “Spike and Mike’s Sick Twisted Festival of Animation” once every six months or so when it came to town.

I am just old enough that when I was a teenager, there weren’t really any videos online, so this was the only way you could see, weird, experimental animated short films from around the world.

Sadly, with the onset of Youtube and high speed internet, interest in Spike and Mike dwindled and seemed to disappear. In stepped Beavis & Butthead creator Mike Judge and animator Don Hertzfeldt with a new touring show, “The Animation Show”. Unfortunately, The Animation Show does not seem to be faring any better.

This film, “City Paradise”, wasn’t even all that animated, to be perfectly honest.

It isn’t true to say that the films collected in Volume 3 are poor in quality, but rather that they don’t really make an effort to reach out to the broader audience outside of the art house crowd. While the majority of us have been accustomed to seeing thousands of clever, well animated, funny and coherent films popping up online faster than we can even watch them, it’s amazing how few of these films even come close to anything resembling story structure or comedic timing. Read the rest of this entry →

In a recent interview, it became apparent that not one of the goddamn actors in the new “Death Race” remake has even bothered to see the original film that they’re being paid millions of dollars to rape the memory of. Hardly unbelievable in an age in which people will actually pay good money to see “Disaster Movie” in theaters, but still shocking in it’s offensive disregard for the original movie’s origins.

It’s truly remarkable how carelessly hack filmmakers like Paul W.S. Anderson can take an established cult classic like Death Race 2000, strip it of it’s humor, color and satire, populate it with hammy dipshit actors, blow up some old cars, put up with a few shitty articles like this one, shrug it off and laugh all the way to the bank. I keep trying to give the guy the benefit of the doubt because I genuinely liked both “Soldier” and “Event Horizon”, but Jesus man, this is just too much. The guy is completely missing the point as to what was good about Death Race 2000, like a frat bro who thinks South Park is funny because of all the swearing. It isn’t about what they are saying, it’s about why they are saying it.

Anyway, just in case anyone doesn’t believe me that Jason Statham and all his little friends never even bothered to do the hour and a half of research required to have even a passing knowledge of what they were “acting” in, I’ve edited a little clip of it which you can watch here:

As an added bonus, I’ve uploaded the original trailer to the totally rad 1975 Death Race 2000 here so you can see how much better it is: