Explosive Donut

On Saturday, Bryan, Jeff, and his girlfriend Alison (I think) went on the weekly trip to Thai Tom. It was delicious of course. We then headed over to Scarecrow to get a movie (Jeff and Alison had never been there). Bryan wins the award for finding “Sakigake!! Korumati Koko: The Movie”. The movie is about a terrible high school in Japan that has a tendency to be destroyed. The movie is more like a series of skits that losely tie together. There’s virtually no continuity, Mechazawa dies at least twice and always just shows up again. It wasn’t a hard sell for me, although Jeff and Alison were a bit more apprehensive. In retrospect, this is the first sign of a crazy crazy movie.

Just thinking about the cast cracks me up:
Mechazawa
He’s a smoking yakuza robot. At one point he’s posessed a la “The Exorcist”. I’m not going to ruin the movie and say why though. My favorite character (and pictured above).
Freddie
Freddie is the ultimate gay stereotype. He walks around with just pants and suspenders the entire movie. The closest thing to a shirt he ever wears is an apron (with pants and suspenders). Think the “we work hard, we play hard” steel mill from The Simpsons. Halfway through the movie he rides a horse for no apparent reason. He’s also once refered to as “Hard Gay.”
A Big Gorilla
I’m not sure what this character’s name is…I don’t think they ever said, in English at least. Regardless, a giant gorilla attends the high school. He’s a pretty active member of the movie, starting a school-wide banana craze and joining the “Earth Defense Force”.
There’s plenty of other hijinx in the movie (one guy that when he throws up the subtitles are radically different – blech! splat! vomit!) so I’m not really ruining things. It’s amazing.
For more info check it out on the IMDB.

The Seattle International Film Festival was around a few weeks ago and I only got around to seeing one film on the last day. I’m so lazy.

The movie, “OSS 117″ is a bit of a French parody of the James Bond series. In a way, it’s like Austin Powers or Naked Gun, in that the main character is a clueless spy. Unlike the other two movies, he is a decent spy occasionally and the jokes are a bit more subtle. From a little research on the IMDB, it seems like there are many movies in the OSS 117 name, although the actor always changes. Apparently it has never made it big in the States because American audiences can’t handle the changing actor thing.
I can see why the movie won the best picture award at the festival. Although there’s a fair amount of slapstick and lunacy, there’s also a point (well, sometimes). In one scene, OSS 117 mistakenly beats up an imam because his call to prayer is keeping him from sleeping. His (and the West’s) ignorance of Islam is a running joke/point throughout the movie.
There also seems to be a French sense of humor (or at least different than anything I’ve seen before) in the movie. Repetition of silly codewords is a big running joke throughout the film. People getting punched in the face and toying with chickens is also maximized for comedic effect.

I saw Brick last night with Siri.

I really enjoyed this movie. I saw the movie at 10pm and didn’t even come close to falling asleep. Since I seem to be borderline narcoleptic, this is truly an endorsement.
The main character is the teenager from “3rd Rock From the Sun” although I didn’t realize it until I came home and started looking up info on the interwebs. Although, I was looking up info because I didn’t get half of the movie (although it seems no one did).
The movie’s a high school murder mystery filmed in noir style (although it is still in color). Parts seem silly and I wonder why they’re in the movie at all (mother feeding the kids apple juice during gang warfare, etc.) but funny nonetheless.
The main character gets beat up a lot though, and this is somewhat (although not completely) less comical.