The Couch Potato Report - June 22nd, 2004
This week in The Couch Potato Report, there's two films that are destined to become cult classics.
Some films that come out in theatres don’t do well.
Those same films are hugely successful once they are available on video and DVD.
The best example of that is the original AUSTIN POWERS movie.
It made less than $54 million dollars when it was released in theatres, but was so successful on video and DVD that the studio green lit a sequel.
The second film turned out to be more popular than the original, grossing $54.7 million in its opening weekend on the way to a box office gross of over $200 million.
Some other popular cult films are CLERKS, THIS IS SPINAL TAP, OFFICE SPACE, HEATHERS, WITHNAIL & I, RED DAWN, REPO MAN and CABIN BOY.
This week, you can add two more recent theatrical mis-fires to that list: Johnny Depp’s SECRET WINDOW and BAD SANTA, starring Billy Bob Thornton.
I’ll begin with the less than good SANTA.
And I don’t refer to it as less than good just because the film is called BAD SANTA, but also because the film itself is less than good. Sure its funny, but I doubt anyone will ever say its a good movie.
But BAD SANTA instantly qualifies as a cult favorite because this movie is going to quite well in the company of people's homes where they can laugh without feeling bad for doing so.
And you will laugh because BAD SANTA has some great comedic moments. At times it is, plain and simply, a comedy without compromise.
Billy Bob Thornton plays a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed thief who targets a different department store every holiday season. Each year he gets the job as the store’s Santa while he cases the joint with his dwarf elf-partner.
The movie also stars Bernie Mac from OCEANS 11, the lovely Lauren Graham of GILMOUR GIRLS, and the late John Ritter in his final film.
BAD SANTA is an anti-holiday film that is not for everyone.
This is a black comedy. If you have a dark sense of humor, you will enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy comedies that push the limits, then don’t watch it.
One thing is for sure, you don’t have to rush out today to check this film out. Its
cult status will ensure that it is around for years.
Just like the film SECRET WINDOW will be.
This newest release from PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN star Johnny Deep has several things working it its favour to ensure it becomes a cult classic. Among those are Depp's quirky performance, a score by Philip Glass and the fact that it is based on a short story by Stephen King.
In SECRET WINDOW, Depp plays a writer who is divorced and depressed. He's stuck at an isolated cabin and he begins to lose lucidity when a stranger arrives, accusing him of plagiarism.
If you’ve seen commercials for this movie, let me tell you right now that it isn’t as scary as it looks to be. It is actually more of a suspense film.
SECRET WINDOW isn’t a great film, but if you like a movie to keep you guessing, this is the film for you.
Plus, ten years from now when this picture has the aura of OFFICE SPACE or RED DAWN, you can tell everyone that you saw it when it first came out. Maybe not in theatres, but at least during the first week it was on video and DVD.
BAD SANTA and SECRET WINDOW are available now on video and DVD. For that matter, so are cult classics AUSTIN POWERS, THIS IS SPINAL TAP, OFFICE SPACE, HEATHERS, WITHNAIL & I, RED DAWN, REPO MAN and CABIN BOY.
COMING UP IN THE NEXT COUCH POTATO REPORT
In the drama COLD MOUNTAIN Jude Law plays a wounded soldier who is struggling to get home to Nicole Kidman, his more than beautiful sweetheart. You will also be struggling…to get through the whole movie. Ouch is it slow! Renee Zellweger also stars and she won an Academy Award for her role as Ruby.
BARBERSHOP 2: BACK IN BUSINESS sees the barbershop crew dealing with a new shop on the block. Ice Cube, Cedric The Entertainer and Eve all return from the original.
Not surprisingly, the 3-disc box set entitled SOUTH PARK – THE COMPLETE FOURTH SEASON features the complete fourth season of the still funny TV show South Park.
Finally next week,
THE PERFECT SCORE tells the story of six students who band together to cheat on their SAT tests. The cast includes young and up and coming starlets Scarlett
Johansson and Erika Christensen, but you won’t care. Call this one THE PERFECT SNORE.
I’ll have more on those, and some other releases, in seven days.
For now, that's this week's COUCH POTATO REPORT.
Enjoy the movies and I'll see you back here next week on The Couch!
Do You Like Music!
Here are the new CD Releases for Tuesday, June 22, 2004:
BRANDY Talk About Our Love (Atlantic)
DONELL JONES TBA Donell Jones (Arista)
JOHN FRUSCIANTE The Will to Death (Warner)
KESHIA CHANTE TBA Keshia Chante (BMG Canada/Vik)
MARTIN CHARLOTTE Martin Charlotte TBA (RCA)
THE CURE TBA (The Cure) (I Am/Universal)
WILCO A Ghost Is Born (Nonesuch/Warner)
Also out today:
Brian Wilson - Gettin' In Over My Head: For the Brian Wilson faithful, the hard part is over when the wizard of SoCal releases an album. For those who need more than cheery, expert melodies and arrangements from on high to be satisfied, for skeptics not satisfied with agreeable guest spots from Eric Clapton, Elton John and Paul McCartney, and for hardheads who need to overcome Wilson's frightening detachment from our moment, there is an answer. Perhaps it's best to think of Gettin' In Over My Head as Wilson's celebrity children's record. "Make a Wish," "Rainbow Eyes" and "Fairy Tale" are right in the pocket already. On a couple of vigorous tracks, such as "Soul Searchin'," which inserts a lead vocal from departed brother Carl and deserves to appear on a future best-of, grown-ups can sneak in their enjoyment sideways.
Bill Clinton's 'My Life': Much too much of a not-so-good thing
(AP) - In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton flew home from New Hampshire to affirm the execution of a cop killer, Rickey Ray Rector. Rector was brain-damaged; when he took his last walk, he left a slice of pecan pie in his cell, intending to eat it when he returned.
Many have wondered whether the Arkansas governor was influenced by politics. His campaign was struggling with reports that he had had an affair with a blond entertainer, Gennifer Flowers, and the execution embellished his tough-on-crime reputation. But Rickey Ray Rector is not mentioned in Bill Clinton's autobiography, My Life.
Instead, we read about people like Mauria Jackson, with whom he attended his senior class party in high school: "Since Mauria and I were both unattached at the time and had been in grade school together at St. John's, it seemed like a good idea, and it was."
That's it. Nothing more about Mauria Jackson, except that she showed up in New Hampshire to campaign for him in 1992, along with hordes of other Friends of Bill.
Jackson is not the only person who makes a cameo appearance in My Life. There are multitudes of them, each of them no doubt treasured by the former president but many of them completely irrelevant to the rest of us.
None of them comes alive, not even the main characters of this badly conceived, flatly written, poorly edited book. Not Hillary Rodham Clinton, who comes off as a cardboard saint who is said to be smart and tough and good. Not special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, the book's villain, who comes off as pure evil - not really a human being at all, more of an incubus.
And not even Bill Clinton himself. Here is one of the most fascinating figures of his time, a charismatic and brilliant man - a fatherless boy who rose from humble beginnings to live, in his own words, "an improbable life", and he has produced a book that lacks anything more than the most rudimentary insights. This master politician does not even offer a single good discussion of the art of politics.
Part of the problem is that My Life is relentlessly chronological, especially the second half of the book, which is devoted to his presidency. Almost every paragraph describes another meeting with a foreign leader or the signing of another bill or delivery of another speech.
The effect is mind-numbing. It's like being locked in a small room with a very gregarious man who insists on reading his entire appointment book, day by day, beginning in 1946.
There is one exception to the chronology: Clinton tells about his indiscretions with Flowers and Monica Lewinsky only when he is caught and exposed, not when they happened. The consequences, not the dalliances, are part of My Life.
He doesn't say a lot about either woman. He concentrates on his remorse and the effects on his marriage and career. He suggests that he is a damaged man, prone to secret, shameful, parallel lives because of his upbringing as the stepson of an alcoholic. But his explanations seem too pat, and finally too brief. And then the chronology continues.
There are some interesting passages, such as Clinton's accounts of his first, unsuccessful campaign (for Congress) and his later races for governor. He brings passion to his brief on the Whitewater investment scandal, and his description of his unsuccessful efforts to end the violence in the Middle East in his last months as president.
But to find the interesting stuff, you have to dig through so much that is not.
Like much of the first half of the book, which alternates the story of Clinton's life (and his encounters with such people as Mauria Jackson) with primers on the history of the 1960s and tidy lessons that would serve him well when he became president.
Like an explanation of why he allowed junior staffers to eat in the White House mess (it's good for morale).
Like occasional, detailed rundowns of University of Arkansas football or basketball games.
And like all those unhelpful descriptions of those multitudes he has encountered. On Prince Charles and Diana: "I liked them both and wished that life had dealt them a different hand."
You dig and you dig. And in the end, it just isn't worth it.
Music Labels Aim to Pocket a Comeback with New CD
LONDON (Reuters) - Some of the world's largest record companies are testing a new music format in Europe known as the pocket CD to spin new life into faltering music singles.
At three inches in diameter -- or roughly half the size of a conventional compact disc -- the pocket CD carries a selection of music tracks and mobile phone ring tones from a host of artists ranging from 50 Cent to Black Eyed Peas.
The technology made its debut in Germany last summer with Universal Music, Sony Music and later EMI and BMG, all selling a limited number of the CDs to test the public's appetite.
Now, Universal Music, for one, is introducing the format in the United Kingdom next month. A spokesman said it will ship 1,000 units of the pocket CD for 16 of its artists including 50 Cent and The Rasmus. Pricing has yet to be determined, he added.
With ringtone sales on the rise and CD single sales plummeting, record executives are hopeful the new format will reverse the fortunes of an industry beset by rampant piracy and slumping sales.
The discs can be played on a PC where the ringtones can be downloaded and then transferred to a mobile phone.
The pocket CD is viewed as a way to recapture the market for tech-savvy teenagers and twentysomethings -- the same group that has abandoned record shops in favor of downloading songs off the Internet. The CD single is one of the biggest casualties of the downloading revolution.
"We believe there is still demand for a physical single format, and hope that folding in a ringtone will make pocket CDs an attractive - and, hopefully, collectible - purchase," a Universal Music UK spokesman said.
"That said, it is a very early days, and this is purely a test to see how the market responds," he added.
A BMG spokesman in Germany said that while sales went well, retailers had difficulties stocking the odd-shaped disc forcing the label to stop the program last month.
For Universal, the move comes amid plans to phase out the sale of copy-protected compact discs in Germany, a market battered by online piracy and CD-burning.
A Universal spokesman said the decision was made to address ongoing concerns that copy-protected CDs do not play in some hi-fi devices. The company could return to some form of copy-protected discs after further fine-tuning of the technology, he added.