Playing Catch-Up

The High Hat put out a supplemental issue featuring several Best of 2006 lists from its on-staff columnists, including "2006 At The Movies" by film critic George Wu, "The Year In Tights" best (and worst) superhero comics of 2006 by Jon Morris, and Gary Mairs counts down the best Youtube clips from the past year, among several others.

Oh yeah, Joe's birthday presents came in last week. All DVD's, natch. It's getting more and more difficult tracking down classic film noirs that he hasn't already seen so I went with things that I knew he would like outside of the genre, and dammit, I was interested in them too. Not everything good on celluloid has to contain your precious Richard Widmark, pun'kin. ;-)


Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge: The Complete Series. Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge character, also from earlier last month's divine purchase of I'm Alan Patridge, and his trainwreck of a (parody) chat show didn't quite live up to the consistent guffaws of the previously mentioned series, despite some interesting ideas and the always engaging Mr. Coogan. But a majority of the gags were already well-trodden material and a few skits seemed to never quite launch quite effectively. A show that if I had stumbled upon it in on some oddball cable access program at three in the morning I might have possibly found it surreally charming. But it never quite gelled for me. Maybe it could have used more Richard Widmark.


I also bought him The White Diamond, Werner Herzog's documentary of British airship engineer Dr. Graham Dorrington's invention of a fully maneuverable helium-filled mini zeppelin and his tests taken over and around the glorious Kaieteur Falls in the heart of the Guyanan jungle. The story that unfolds, rather, has more to do with Dorrington's apprehension and lack of confidence in his work as well as his abilities after his previous flight experiment left his good friend dead. Herzog caught some unbelievably breathtaking shots of the balloon's silent journey over the jungle's misty canopy and thousands of swifts diving behind the waterfalls to seek shelter in the mysterious cavern that lay behind. Lovely and touching work from one of Joe's favorite directors.

I would now, however, like to bring to your attention a DVD that will be released this Tuesday -- a movie that was only released in no more than seen cities nationwide...


Written and directed by Mike Judge, the creator of TV's Beavis & Butthead and King Of The Hill and the cult hit film Office Space, Idiocracy is finally making it to the stores this week but I finally caught a glimpse of it this past Wednesday. I've heard nothing but rave reviews heralding it as one of the best unseen movies of 2006, and yeah, I liked it the first time I saw it. But I liked it even better the second time. And then the third. And the reason isn't because I found the acting all that great (it isn't) or the jokes all that funny (they aren't), but I am in absolute awe over the sheer ambitious scope of Judge's future creation -- a vision that takes multiple viewings to fully absorb and fully appreciate.

Luke Wilson plays mild-mannered army librarian Joe Bauers, a man of average intelligence with little ambition who in 2005 is selected for a top-secret military hibernation experiment where, forgotten once the project was disbanned, winds up 500 years into the future where the U.S. is populated entirely by idiots, making Joe and fellow test subject, streetwise prostitute Rita (played by SNL's Maya Rudolph) the two smartest individuals in the United States of America. Everything our future holds for us is based on the theory that people with lower intelligence, education, and income are more likely to overbreed and combined with the gradual decline of quality highbrow American culture the nation is now populated entirely of people who speak in nothing but monosyllables, vulgarities, and moronic pop culture catchphrases. A few mega corporations run every aspect of the country (one of which owns both the FDA and the FCC and has replaced the nation's water supply with some electric green Gatorade-like substance) and the president of the United States is a former pro-wrestler and porn star (played by the always-a-hoot Terry Crews) with all the macho posturing of one and the over-the-top libidinous behavior of the other.

This is a future that Judge obvious invested a lot of thought into. His evident disdain for modern pop culture and corporate greed run unchecked colors every shade of this future new world movie set as detailed as Blade Runner for retards. It took me several viewings just to pick up on all the things that I missed -- like a TV news crawl that ran left-to-right instead of right-to-left. A dilapidated highway where cars continuously drive over the edge one-by-one, landing in an ever-increasing pile of twisted metal. And a public restroom sign that forgoes the universal image of a female figure on the ladies' room door to a figure of a female sitting on a toilet. The fact that in the future humanity has grown so helplessly ignorant that one must actually have to have an image of a person sitting on a toilet in order to process the information that this is where you go to sit on the toilet is both hilariously and tragically funny to me in so many layered intricacies.

Anyway, check it out Tuesday and get back to me with your comments this week if you can. I'd love to hear what you guys thought. And maybe some of you might help me understand why throughout the movie there appeared to be an unsettlingly large amount of Hispanic people and last names being bandied about in the Idiocracy future world. I was hoping maybe it was just my imagination.