I'm a bit remiss in posting updates on my web column, Addicted to Bad. There have been new columns the last two weeks, I just haven't gotten around to writing them up. Because I'm lazy. Also, I suck.
Actually, to be brutally honest, I wasn't terribly enthused with
my efforts two weeks ago (AKA ATB no. 48), although my perception of the quality of work is undoubtedly clouded by the miserable time I had composing the thing. I was up
way too late that night, although I eventually got it done and in respectable form. It was to be my take on the pair of awful "master of disguise" movies that came out a few years ago. No, not
the Dana Carvey one, although maybe watching that one would have helped -- I'm speaking of the bland Val Kilmer/Elisabeth Shue remake of
The Saint, and the dreary-yet-somehow-still-goofy Bruce Willis/Richard Gere "master of disguise" assassin movie
The Jackal.
My issue with these movies is that, for the most part, being a "master of disguise" seems to consist of dying your hair a slightly different color and pasting on a fake mustache. It's goofy and implausible, since even a lousy beat cop could spot these guys from 100 yards, but neither film is goofy or suspenseful enough to be enjoyable. At least
The Saint takes itself slightly less seriously, and moves along at a decent clip;
The Jackal is predictable and just plain tedious. Only Richard Gere's impossible hilarious "They're tryin' to steal me Lucky Charms" Irish accent offers any real entertainment.
That said, coming up with a column concept to fit around that wasn't hard, it just took me a while to get into a writing groove.
The end result, to be fair, isn't bad by any means, just not my favorite piece of work.
Last week's column, however, was a nice return to form, I think. I had been wanting to dothe Jon Voight crapfest
Baby Geniuses for ages, but I couldn't find it at any video stores nearby (and good for them). Fortunately, it was Netflix to the rescue. (Which reminds me of a recent story from Amazon UK concerning films that people rent or buy online because they're too ashamed to do so in person. The top film was the Spice Girls'
Spice World*. For the record, I rent most of my movies for the column in person. Lord only knows what the girls at the video store think of someone who rents mostly things like
Blair Witch 2.) Anyway, my original concept was "Notes from the 2030 Remake of
Baby Geniuses." The concept actually has/had promise, but I was under the gun deadline-wise, and I wasn't sure I could pull it off in the time I had. I had the idea a while ago of doing excerpts from a director's commentary, and I knew I could knock that one out of the park (or at least manage a solid triple). And I think I did quite nicely.
However, about halfway through I started down a potentially promising road, namely that the director had some really unfortunate ailments, but I think I started pushing it too far. The column originally ended thusly:
1:15-1:20: [Weeping] Oh, God. Oh no! Oh, God. [Flatulence] [More weeping] [Vomiting interrupted by flatulence] [Yet more weeping] Aaaaah! [Flatulence interrupted by vomiting] [Concurrent weeping and diarrhea] [Silence]1:26: A mop! It's a long, wooden stick with, I don't know, a mop thing on the end of it! What? No. You clean it up. I'm leaving.
The problem was, I was deviating too far from the whole "Jon Voight is a jackass" theme, which was where I had originally intended to go. So I scrapped that ending and wrote
the one that appears in the final version, which is far superior, even though I'm fond of escalating flatulence/weeping/vomiting. But then, who isn't?
* The other nine on the list were:
The Sound of Music, Annie, Bambi, Super Mario Bros., Barb Wire, Thunderbirds, Titanic, Hellboy, Gigli.
Super Mario and
Barb Wire I can understand.
Gigli, no question. But
Bambi?
