One of the films that I've been waiting on for a long time finally arrived for my viewing pleasure - The Aristocrats. It is a documentary of "the worlds dirtiest joke" which features around 100 comedians telling it and talking about it. If you aren't familiar with the joke, it probably sounds like a bad premise to tell the same joke over and over again, but there is a catch. The catch is that there are are a couple of fixed pieces (including the punchline) but the rest is totally up to the telling comedian to create and perform. So every telling is unique and can range from a couple of minutes long to hours long. The joke is known to be the favorite of Johnny Carson and is performed in the movie by many of the best comedians working today like Jon Stewart, Gilbert Gottfried, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, George Carlin and many others. My personal favorites were Bob Saget and Gilbert Gottfried. I always thought of Bob Saget in terms of "Full House" and "America's Funniest Home Videos", where he seemed like a bit of a cornball goody-goody. Nothing could be further from the truth, as his telling of it is by far the filthiest (and funniest). If you have a tolerance for (really) filthy jokes, check out the film and the links below. Dead Frog has a great database of different tellings so that you can get an idea of how great (or horrible) that it is. This joke is not for the faint of heart. Don't say I didn't warn you...

Official Film Site
IMDB Entry
The Aristocrats on Dead Frog
Wikipedia Entry

1. Apocalypse Now
2. Clockwork Orange
3. Pulp Fiction
4. Lord of the Rings (the whole series)
5. Blade Runner
6. Dune
7. Amadeus
8. American Beauty
9. Kill Bill Vol 1 & 2
10. Midnight Run
11. Sid & Nancy
12. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
13. The Outlaw Josey Wales

I've been remiss in sharing feedback for movies that we've been watching lately, so I figured it was time for some catch up. The last two movies we've watched are Alien versus Predator (AVP) and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

I'm quite a fan of both the Alien and Predator franchises, so it was easy for me to get excited about a movie where they get it on. If you are a hardcore fan of the Predator series then you would know where the whole AVP idea came from. In Predator 2, when Danny Glover gets on the Predator's ship he finds a trophy room of various skulls & such, one of which is that of an "Alien". That sets the stage for some Alien hunting. (SPOILER ALERT) The story in AVP is a group of earthlings spot a mysterious energy bolt that hits Antarctica and illuminates a pyramid structure. They quickly organize a group to go & investigate, where they find an early 1900's abandoned shipping town where all of the residents had mysteriously vanished. It turns out that the town is exactly over the pyramid which is deep underground. They find a perfectly drilled hole to the pyramid and start to explore. Well that is exactly what the Predators have in mind, as you can't spawn Aliens without hosts to impregnate. Turns out that the Predators built the pyramid as a hunting ground to chase the ultimate prey - Aliens. They have a queen bound and in stasis waiting to crank out loads of pods. Of course our bumbling humans find the pod room with plenty of screams and slime to follow. The survivors are caught in the middle of the Alien/Predator hunt. I won't ruin the ending but it was fun and left open a sequel. Don't get me wrong, this movie will never be thought of as any kind of great thing, but it is good escapist entertainment. Sky Captain is another story...

Sky Captain is the first (of what will likely be many) movie with human actors and absolutely zero sets. Not one. Every shot was in front of green screen. I was intrigued about the movie from a technology point of view, and figured anything with Angelina Jolie can't be all bad. How could I have been more wrong. What a total and utter piece of crap Sky Captain turned out to be. It was so bad that I'm not even going to bother going through the lame plot and execution. Angelina Jolie had about 5 minutes of screen time, none of which was memorable. The acting and effects were profoundly lame, no exceptions. I imagine it is difficult to get into a character when there are no sets to draw inspiration from. I also had a big problem with them using Sir Laurence Olivier as the villain. Something about piecing together footage of the deceased in a new movie just bothers me, kind of like the John Wayne Diet Coke commercials or Natalie Cole doing "Unforgettable" with her dead father. Sky Captain was so bad that it has made my "Movies that kind of suck" category. It is bad enough that I might have to add a "Movies that totally (not kind of) suck".

DRE* and I went to our usual mid-week movie to see I Heart Huckabees!. What an utter piece of drivel. It has to be one of the worst movies that I've seen in a very long time. Now I like a quirky movie as much (or more) than the next person, but this thing was 106 minutes of constant psycho-babble. Think of the second and third Matrix movies, but remove all of the ass-kicking. Avoid this movie. Their website is almost as bad as the movie.

Bravo aired a 5-part special this weekend of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments. Being a hardcore movie junkie, this was not to be missed. I didn't agree with all of their selections or their rankings (28 Days Later is way better than number 100!), but it was still quite entertaining.

With the number of titles in my movie catalog breaking 300, I realized that browsing alphabetically isn't the most user-friendly thing, so it was time for a new feature - "browse by genre". In addition to browsing by genre, I've added a synopsis for every movie which can be viewed by clicking the link in the catalog here.

DRE* and I continued our new Wednesday tradition of going to the movies and seeing Team America:World Police. If you haven't heard of it yet, the movie is a satirical look at the "war on terrorism" and liberal Hollywood blow-hards, all done with marionettes (like the Thunderbirds). Team America is from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the guys who brought us South Park and Orgazmo. Thankfully it isn't a musical like South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut was, but there were still some catchy tunes like "America! Fuck yeah! We're coming to save the mother-fucking planet!" and "Freedom isn't Free. It is a buck o' five ($1.05)". I laughed pretty much through the whole thing, several times so hard that I thought I might piss myself. My favorite scenes were the marionette sex, alley vomit and the "jaguar attack". In the event you might go to see it, I'll avoid any further spoilers.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm a bit of a movie freak. To keep track of them I put together an online catalog (includes DRE's movies too) which can be found here. There are new titles being added all the time and if I know you well enough you can feel free to borrow one or two whenever you like.