David Fincher’s Zodiac (aka, greatest movie of this century) had two bits of love tossed their way this week on television …

American Horror Story: Cult – Episode 7 “Valerie Solanas Died For Your Sins: Scumbag”

where they revealed the Zodiac killer to be… killerS, by way of Andy Warhol’s real-life would be assassin and her man-hating minions!  and presented in a very Fincheresque manner!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoWc8dkAtJg

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Riverdale – Chapter Fifteen: Nighthawks

a killer is on the loose and in the episode’s closing minutes, to the tune of Donovan’s ‘Season of The Witch’, he strikes again!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmQeoVFsD18

just like he did in Fincher’s movie, which was set to Donovan’s ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’

Zodiac turns 10 on this very day – March 2nd  

ZODIAC!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ever since I saw the movie, I have not ever shut up about it.  You should know this.  I am still working on an street team (that no one asked me to be a part of… mainly cause I invented this street team) to try and get Zodiac a retroactive Oscar for Best Picture of the 21st century (juss a reminder – one of the most critically loved movies of this century got ZERO Academy Award nominations)

anywho, I keep tweeting about my love for all things Zodiac, but I never really have elaborated why I love it.  so here ye go – on things about the movie Zodiac that makes me love it endlessly…

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mustard yellows and browns abound

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all the real life people’s names are SO amazing sounding that they actually sound fake – David Toschi, Jack Mulanax, Ken Narlow, Sherwood Morrill, Duffy Jennings, and mos especially Melvin Belli… a lawyer who was once on Star Trek!!

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Donovan’s ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ is now the most rockinest & creepiest anthem ever

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and Donovan’s daughter Ione Skye was in the movie too!

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Ruffalo’s hair

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it inspired me to read not one, but TWO books!

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when I was in the Napa and San Fran, I made sure to make pit stops at a couple of the murder sites.  WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME THAT I WANT TO VISIT THE SITES OF MURDERS CAUSE I LEARNED ABOUT THEM IN A MOVIE!??!

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the more Jake Gyllenhaal & John Carroll Lynch movies together, the better.  They’re both unsettling awesome actors with screen presences for daze!  Zodiac was their 3rd pairing.  The others – 2002’s The Good Girl, and 2001’s The Bubble Boy

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the little touches, like Pong!

the blue drinks!

and the squirrels, and dildo in Arthur Leigh Allen’s trailer!

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ever since the movie has been released, far more people have claimed that the Zodiac was their father (including Time Werespanko), and some claim the Zodiac was even a Presidential candidate!

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I love this movie so much that when I saw Jimmi Simpson (who was in the movie for all of like 5 minutes at the end) smoking a cigarette on the street in New York, I went up to him, without remembering his name, and said, ‘I just wanted to let you know that you were AMAZING in Zodiac… and everything else you’ve ever been in!’  He said ‘thanks‘ 

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the Zodiac has never been caught, and so the mystery endures, and as the years pass, the movie only gets more awesomer

Gone Girl
Desperate Housewife
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 149 min

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Gone Girl the movie is thankfully no Gone Baby Gone

Along for the ride are his annoying screen sister (Carrie Coon), his crafty lawyer (Tyler Perry’s Madea‘s Law Firm), and Doogie Howser, playing against type, as a character who is not a child prodigy doctor + apparently Ben Affleck’s penis, and this girl, who’s boobs aren’t gone, they HERE!!!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Gone Girl is found at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
No Slander On This Salander!
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 158 min

The wait is over kids.  David Fincher‘s English language (wouldn’t dare call it ‘American’, cause it’s not whatsoever) version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is no longer juss the kick ass teaser/trailer/music video of the year, it is now a movie that has to be able to deliver the goods. And?  It does indeed deliver them goods, mad good… as much as Stieg Larsson‘s story will let it/him.  What does that mean?  Well, if you know the story (and if you don’t, what planet are you from, UrineAnus?), you know it pulsatinglyly builds and builds and builds, and then goes BOOM, and then it kinda whimpers for another 30 minutes after the boom, as it re-focuses on the original task at hand, which is no longer as interesting as the sidetracked task just handled.  OK, that’s about as much bitching as we’re capable of making, cause otherwise Fincher hands in an A paper on celluloid digital projection

The Social Network gave Finchy the worldwide love & attention he deserved, but a 1s & 0s subject matter like that was well beneath his skill & artistry.  Anyone could have directed Aaron Sorkin’s script to greatness, even Ivan Reitman’s kid, or even one of Lawrence Kasdan’s kids, or even Tom Hanks’ dopey kid we just wished went away 9ever.  Anywho, Fincher is back in the territory where he belongs and we want him to stay – making flicks where people are murdered and other people try to solve those murders.  He brings his Zodiac (you know, that movie that’s one of the greatest movies ever) preciseness & pacing and applies it to the frigid and cruel Swedish world that sweeties Mikael Blomkvist & Lisbeth Salander do their investigationining thing in

So how does this new one stack up against the very very solid original flick?  It kinda bests it in every way possible, even if the original didn’t really need besting in the first place.  Still, better Fincher do it than say Ivan Reitman’s kid, or even one of Lawrence Kasdan’s kids, or even Tom Hanks’ dopey kid we just wished went away 9ever.  We gets Christopher Plummer sounding all von Sydow-y! Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd loving Enya! Steven Berkoff hating Axel Foley! Robin Wright penning! Joely Richardson holy richardsons! Goran Visnjic with visnjacrazywitz hair! and Julian Sands juss being Aryan handsome!!!!!!  And nothing against Michael Nyqvist & Noomi Rapace, but Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara do Mik & Lis a lick better, mainly cause it’s a bit more believable and much more watchable to see Dan & Roo get bizzy than Nyquil & Noo.  Rooney’s performance as Lisbeth in particular is fracking spectacular, but don’t make us choose Lisbeths, cause there’s room for two Lisbeth performances in this world, like there was for Truman Capote.  Sadly, Toby Jones got hosed in that race, just like Rapace got zilch for being totes THE girl with the dragon tatts.  Guess what we’re saying is, why not give Rooney the Oscar.  We’d like to see Streep sport white eyebrows and get plowed by a fat dude while handcuffed (point of clarification – we are not hactually asking to see that, we juss making the point that Rooney as Lisbeth is a brave brave performance that Meryl Streep might hactually be incapable of braving, or something to that DAS EFX)

moral of the story – it’s no Zodiac, but it’s a David Fincher film, and people should see David Fincher films, cause every other film isn’t a David Fincher film

Swede Jesus!!:  Harriet Vagner haunts her uncle’s life, and now our dreams, in a good way, cause she’s so dreamy!!!  and she is

Moa Garpendal

and how about her cousin Anita, aka

Mathilda von Essen

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Tattoo you at a theater near Jews on December 21st

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Carlos
Highjackal!
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Simple rule of thumb for exceedingly crazy-arsed long movies: a movie can be as long as it needs to be, just so long as anything over the perfect runtime of 90 minutes is absolutely necessary.  Most movies could use a good trim (the 3rd LOTR flick) and some could stand to be expanded (Zodiac, duh!), and some shouldn’t have been made longer than 5 minutes (Nerderberg’s insufferable Che).  Olivier Assayas‘ Carlos, a sprawling and masterful 3-part French TV mini-series epic, turned into one gigantic film for other countries, clocks in at a WHOPPING 330 minutes (5 1/2 hours), and we can honestly say that not a single moment was wasted, even if one’s eyes will fall out of their sockets after sitting thru it.  (there will also be a 165 ‘theatrical cut’ being shown in theaters, which we have yet to see and are THIGHLY curious to check out what got cut in half!!!)

What’s moist hammazin about Assayas’ mammoth undertaking is not how he pulled it off (but seriously, HOW DID HE?! 2 decades of story, shot over 7 months, in 7 different countries, in countless languages, all looking MIGHTY 70s/80s GORGEOUS!!), but how dang fast it all flys by!!!  ZIP ZIP ZOOOOEY!!!  Luckily he took his pacing cues from Fincher’s Zodiac!  Even if the film went unmade, the work and research that Assayas and co-writer Dan Franck put into a 300 page screenplay is worthy of applause all on its own!!!!  And guess what, so little is actually known about Venezuelan global terrorist Carlos the Jackal (Édgar Ramírez, who deserves a ton of accolades, and more accent marks in his name) that they had to make up a bunch of stuff!!!  And who cares, hispecially if it’s so dang captivating (even if it’s hard to maintain fluid and tense drama for that long of a period)!  It’s like what Finchy and Sorkin pulled with The Social Network, but Carlos deals with stuff that’s actually important, like hurting people, and not juss their feelings!

OK, there’s some known stuff about the Jackal, like killing some cops, taking some hostages here and there, flying planes to shady countries, drinking tons of whiskey, smoking tons of fags, banging some slutty revolutionary chicks, plotting, plotting some more, plotting some more after some more, until he eventually became a bloated nonentity and a relic dinosaur of terrorism’s past, before eventually being captured!!!  In a shellnut, that’s the entire story

Carlos is the flipside of Spielbergo’s Munich, AKA the best movie of 2005!!  While we’re not likely to put Carlos at the very very top of our list at the end of 2010, in time, that may turn out to be a decision we regret.  What to do, what to do????  Dunno, but you should give up 330 minutes of your life to see this, which you’ll gladly never get back!!!

Time Out of Mind:  so what is the longest movie ever?   Guinness sez The Cure For Insomnia. sounds more like the cause of insomnia!!  here are two lists of the longest films evers!!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Carlos will be released as follows:

TV – broadcast premiere on the Sundance Channel from Rocktober 11 thru 13 (sorry about the late notice!)

THEATRICAL – opens in NY on Friday.  330 minute Special Roadshow Edition at IFC Center – Roct 15 to Nov 2 ONLY.  The 165 minute ‘theatrical cut’ will be shown at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.  Both the extended version and the shorter cut will roll out theatrically elsewhere elsewhen

VOD – the 165 minute cut will also be shown on video on demand beginning Rocktober 20

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…