Chernobyl Diaries
Where It’s Kinda (Pripy)at
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 86 min

We siht you not, but touring Chernobyl is something we’ve semi-dreamed of doing.  Sounds stoopid, but people do it, and now it’s the premise for a movie, and of course we had to see this movie, cause it’s like a semi-dream come true!  Chernobyl is a nuclear power plant, and Pripyat is the adjacent city where the workers and their families lived.  When disaster stuck, the people left Pripyat and never returned.  It’s a ghost town permanently stuck in 80s USSRness.  How would anyone NOT want to go and visit that?!?!?  And how could this not make for a killer movie??!?!

The first half of Chernobyl Diaries, when our protagonists travel to and walk around Pripyat (obviously they didn’t actually film there, but they did a great job of make a faux version of the city!!!), is eggzactly what we were looking for in a Chernobyl movie - eeriness, mysteriousness, creepiness, and bordering on outright scarinessness.  Then when siht goes wrong, and when the movie turns into a pseudo-horror fest, the movie goes wrong.  Not exactly wrong in terribleness, but juss wrong to the just right that came before it.  The scarinessness they jam in our faces isn’t all that scary.  That’s part of the problem, cause empty Chernobyl/Pripyat itselfves is enuff scary that a movie about Chernobyl/Pripyat  doesn’t require additional lame scares that aren’t scary

moral of the story - Chernobyl Diaries is a basic dumb horror movie with a killer premise with much promise.  the promise is partly there, and the rest is a basic dumb horror movie.  One lil thing that was hugely lacking was a bit more backstory of the disaster.  Doubt the kind of people seeing this kind of movie are overly familiar with that kinda history.  The backstory IS the story, not some tourist kids being stuck in a place where no one wants to be stuck

Dark Shadows
Not Awful!
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 113 min

Since Ed Wood, Tim Burton has made one really really good Tim Burton movie (Sleepy Hollow) and one really really really good non-Tim Burton movie (Big Fish).  The rest have been a waste of his talent and our time.  The remakes have been especially poor, so one doesn’t expect much of a TV remake, right?  Semi-wrong.  His Dark Shadows might not exactly be a return to form, but it’s more of a return to Burton norm, and even with a not so hot third act, this is still a good sign, and a decent movie to boot.  Johnny Depp & co sizzle with the material, and it’s a lot of fun, until the material sizzles out, and then it’s not as fun

btw, not a huge fan of blue eyes, but we want to make love to Bella Heathcote‘s baby blues.  btw, Dark Shadows neeeded like 8812838266363636% more Bella Heathcote and her eyes!!!!!!!!!

Verdictgo: despite weak endings, the beginnings warrant low low low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Chernobyl and Shadows shed light to the darkness at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

2020 - Texting by thinking!

2042 – Floating Hotels In The Sky!

2079 –  Practical Flying Cars Are Entering The Consumer Market!

2092 – West Antarctica Is Among The Fastest Growing Areas In The World!

2190 - Matter Replication Devices Are Available For The Home!

2240 - Christianity Is Fading From American Culture! 

2300 - Superhuman Powers Are Available To Common Citizenry!

22,000 – The Chernobyl Disaster Site Becomes Fully Safe!

250,000,000  – ADA supercontinent is forming on Earth!

but it aint all happy stuff on the hammazin…

Future Timeline

totally 5got to ‘celebrate’ our mos flavorite nuclear disaster of balls thyme: Chernobyl.  can’t believe it’s only been 25 years since that horrible sh$t went down.  feels like a zillion years, donut?

one of our crazy goals in life is to one day visit Chernobyl and Prypiat, the abandoned neighboring town that housed the nuclear plant’s workers.  yes, VISIT!!!!!  yes, people can and do - FAQ: I want to tour Chernobyl. How do I get there?

we jealous of these Plan C artist people, who were captivated by the never ridden merry-go-round ride in Prypiat’s amusement park and took scrap metal from the area and created a new ride that resides in Manchester England!

Plan C’s flickr page

+

Undiscovered Chernobyl

Chernobyl – before and after the disaster

The Big Picture – Chernobyl disaster

CNN – Nuclear Ghost Town (video)

& an oldie, yet still a goodie: Lost City of Chernobyl

Ordos, China: A Modern Ghost Town

is this the set of 2046?

or perhaps Code 46?

or juss a cleaner, less in a hurry (read: Russian) Chernobyl?

Cop Out
Chasing Lame-y
Official Website | Trailer & Mo

Anyone who was involved in the making of Cop Out should not only be embarrassed, but they should personally surrender their paycheck to any audience member who makes the giant mistake of seeing this ‘throwback’ of an 80s buddy cop flick. It’s more of a throw-up than a throwback and all prints of this movie should be burned and have their ashes scattered in the Chernobyl reactor so no one would dare to try and retrieve them. We kinda wonder how Cop Out woulda turned out had it moved forward with its original name, A Couple of Dicks, and original duo, Robin Williams and James Gandolfini! But wonder(ing) is for crappy white bread, so what we’re forced to deal with is Kevin Smith‘s directed take on Robb and Mark Cullen‘s script, although we do wonder how much more awfuler it might have been had Kevin Smith written the script himself

How did this fail more than fail itself? Yes, Kevin Smith’s name doesn’t scream comedy gold or anything remotely good, but pairing Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan does, and yet the end result is Willis looking like a dumbfounded babysitter, as Morgan unbelievably has more screen chemistry with Seann William Scott than he did with Willis. And how could this script ever be considered a 2008 Black Listee, since it seems like there’s a ton of good reasons why it was never produced back then. The plot is this: Willis is suspended w/o pay for a month, which sucks since he has need duckets for his daughter’s wedding, so he decides to sell his Andy Pafko Topps #1 card (a card that hactually has more meaning to us and My Man Markvus, since we used to write Beckett Baseball Card Monthly monthly, during our middle school daze, pleading with them to raise the value of that card since it was Topps’ very very first one!!), but as the sale is about to go down, it gets STOLEN, and then Willis and Morgan have to jump thru hoops (including the likes of Stifler, Susie Essman, Fred Armisen, Guillermo Díaz, Kevin Pollak and his partner Adam Brody?) to get it back! OH NO!!!!! How will it end????? All we’ll say is that the card gets destroyed, his daughter gets married, and every joke found in between, save for a few of Morgan’s improvisations, falls flatter than your 5th grade crush’s chest (we’re gonna keep using this joke for as long as horrid comedies eggist)

OK, there was one redeeming thang about the whole affair: the return of longtime moth-balled synth composer Harold Faltermeyer (Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun & The Running Man). And the only reason why he was called in was cause Smith wanted him, which is no real sirprize since Faltermeyer scored Fletch and Smith was to make a third Fletch movie, but that spankfully never happened, which restored our faith in a higher being, and if Cop Out is any indication of his Smith’s ability to handle a funny-actioner, lettuce hope that it cements his non-involvement in any future Fletch endeavors, or anything for that matter that has an IQ over the lowest common denominator. For more on Faltermeyer, prick up yer ears to this solid interview with him

De La Soul To Her Hole : we never reviewed Nacho Libre, so butter late than never when dropping love to Ana de la Reguera

Verdictgo: Slit Yer Eyes Out Repoopulous

Cop Out strikes out today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…