Videogum » Christopher Walken

That’s Your Radio Show Host: Christopher Walken

Gabe — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:45:21 +0000

It’s the closest we’re ever going to get to the universally shared dream of an episode of the Leonard Lopate Show being hosted by an actual Christopher Walken impersonator. Second best thing!

The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time: Envy

Gabe — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:00:15 +0000

Every year, one billion (exactly one billion) dumb movies get made that are either remakes or reboots or in some other way derivative of a thing that has been done before. Everyone knows that. And so it is easy to complain about Hollywood as a Lukewarm Rehash Factory, pumping out the Lukewarm Rehashes like it is their job (because it is their job). But there is another type of movie that Hollywood puts out that might be even more dangerous (haha, dangerous) and pernicious (haha, pernicious), and that is the movie that THINKS it has an interesting idea behind it, but doesn’t. These movies are, of course, the bread and butter of The Hunt, because they combine being awful with being pretentious and misguided. What a combination! Most of the movies we have discussed have been some variation on this theme, but few of them have actually taken their title from the Seven Deadly Sins, only to be a half-baked screwball garbage comedy about dog shit.

Envy, however, is just such a movie.

The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time: Domino

Gabe — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:02:51 +0000

This week’s nominee, Domino, is loosely based on the life of an actual human being named Domino Harvey (sure, very real name, yes), who was the daughter of an Oscar-nominated actor named Laurence Harvey. Domino shunned (SHUNNED!) her wealthy Hollywood background to become a bounty hunter in South Central, Los Angeles. Fair enough. That is a perfectly reasonable idea for a movie, I guess. They’ve certainly made movies about worse subjects. Although they have rarely made worse movies. Tragically, she died before the movie was released of a methamphetamine overdose. The only silver lining to her death is that she never had to actually see this thing. Unless they have movie theaters in heaven, but we can’t know that for sure, and one would hope that the angel manager would make better decisions about what to screen. “Where am I, a movie theater in hell?” That is what an angel would ask if they showed this movie in heaven. What I’m trying to say is: YIKES.

The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time: Kangaroo Jack

Gabe — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:51:51 +0000

As a rule, a children’s movie cannot be the Worst Movie of All Time. Make no mistake, children’s movies are categorically horrible, with very few exceptions, and those exceptions tend to be children’s movies that are mostly for adults, i.e. the only good children’s movies are actually adults’ movies. But even the worst children’s movie has an intended audience of uneducated monsters (children), so you can’t really get mad at it. As someone who once declared the live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie to be “probably the best movie I’ve ever seen. It was incredible,” I feel confident in saying that children’s movies serve their own unique function outside the bounds of mature (mature?) criticism.

So there was some debate about whether or not Kangaroo Jack even belonged in the Hunt. Obviously, it was terrible. That was not up for debate. If absolutely no one on Earth saw this movie (and that is not the case at all, so many people saw this, what?), it would still be generally thought of as horrible. But is it a children’s movie? Because if it is, let’s move on and leave sleeping kangaroos lie (sorry). But Kangaroo Jack is not a children’s movie exactly. For one, it doesn’t have any children in it. As a general pre-requisite a children’s movie has at least one child in it, as a stand in for the young viewer. Or, if not a child, then a CGI creature with childlike qualities. Could that be the titular Kangaroo Jack? Almost, except that he’s not at all childlike, or even remotely funny or interesting or any kind of narrative subject for the theoretical child-viewer’s gaze. He mostly behaves like an actual kangaroo (with the exception of one miserable dream sequence), and he’s CGI because it’s impossible to get a kangaroo to do what you want on a movie. So, the final conclusion is that this is a family movie (wikipedia describes it as a “buddy-action movie” which seems stupidly generous) and is thereby a valid entry in the Hunt. PHEW.

The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time: Man Of The Year

Gabe — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:30:01 +0000

I realized this weekend that the entire genre of a guileless everyman who stumbles into Washington by accident only to discover that it’s up to him to fix American politics was rendered almost instantaneously (and painfully) out of date last Tuesday. That’s not to say that Barack Obama is a guileless everyman. He is not. And it’s also not to say that he’s going to fix American politics. But that wide-eyed comedic trope of exposing the corruption of the American political system via an honest and forthright schmo no longer has the same poignancy. Man of the Year is one of those movies. Although what it now lacks in poignancy it has always made up for, I assume, in being terrible. I’m just going to go out on a limb and say that this movie was probably as horrible on November 3rd, 2008, as it is now. But now it’s out of touch and unrepresentative of any political mood, so if anything it’s even worse.

Saturday Night Live Makes A Funny

Gabe — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:02:49 +0000

Saturday Night Live kind of nailed it this weekend, you guys. Even Christopher Walken’s opening monologue was funny (the opening monologue!). Because NBC will supposedly sue us for helping to promote their show using embedded video clips, I can’t show you what happened. Sorry, maybe you shouldn’t have been out socializing with your friend and having a life Saturday and maybe you’d know what I was talking about. In any case, the whole episode was really weird with lots of unusual premises and also funny sometimes! Success!