Below are ten short plot summaries for films that have, shockingly, ALL been made. I have not put the name of the film at the beginning of each entry in case you'd like to play a "Name the Film" game. There is a link contained in each entry that points to the IMDB page for the film. Prepare to be dumbstruck.
"A Texas Ranger is assigned to protect the only witnesses to the murder of a key figure in the prosecution of a drug kingpin -- a group of University of Texas cheerleaders. He must now go undercover as an assistant cheerleading coach and move in with the young women."
"A deservedly struggling young comedian, lands a menial job on a cruise ship as the Miss-Universe contest is being held on-board. The Big Man On Deck for this voyage is the ship's comedian and all-around ladies' man. As an assorted array of thugs, Panamanian mercenaries and terrorists try to storm the ship, the young comedian hopes for one big chance to prove himself and enter the exciting world of cruise ship comedy."
"After separating from his wife, a former agent quit the spy business and became a restaurateur. The government has asked him to come back and save the world again. The evil antagonist has hypnotized animals into doing her bidding, and plans to use them to take over the world! It's up to the agent to save the world, as only he can battle her Vegetarians and man-eating rabbits!"
"When "street smart" rapper applies for a membership to an all-white Country Club, the establishment's proprietors are hardly ready to oblige him. Unwilling to accept that the club views him as unfit for membership, he purchases land that contains the 17th green - willing only to exchange the hole for a membership. This sets the stage for an outrageous assault on the country club and its membership committee as he and his fun-loving, streetwise crew disrupt the goings-on at the club with their irreverent attitudes and a back-and-forth prankfest."
"A father's psychic abilities are put to the test when his two daughters are trapped inside of a corn maze haunted by the spirits of two young girls who disappeared a year earlier."
"A professor introduces Paul to the practical-joking Kathy. Paul and Kathy seem to hit it off rather well but, during a meteor storm, a meteorite fragment strikes Paul, burying itself deep in his skull, which has the unpleasant side-effect of causing Paul to mutate into a giant reptilian monster at night and go on murderous rampages."
"On the night of a big fashion show, world-famous French designer is poisoned. The same night, his murderers are trying to kill a member of the popular rap group. As the designer dies on the street, a midget witch tries to do something to save him. The next day, as the body of the designer is buried, his soul wakes up to find himself in the rapper's body. Both souls are trapped inside the rapper's body, and every time he suffers a blow, they switch personalities. A tough black rapper becomes a fruity fashion designer and then back again."
"After the death of his brother, a street dancer goes to attend university. But his efforts to get an education and woo the girl he likes are sidelined when he joins in his fraternity's effort to win a step dancing competition."
"Jack is a struggling baseball pitcher who has great natural talent but keeps choking under pressure. Traded to a class A minor league team, he is appalled to discover his third baseman -- and roommate on the road -- is a chimpanzee. While the chimp can actually hold his own on the diamond, Jack feels there's something a bit undignified about having to look after a monkey, and it doesn't help that the chimp has poor hygiene and a chronic case of flatulence."
"An unemployed cartoonist moves back in with his parents and younger brother. When his parents demand he leave, he begins to spread rumors that his father is sexually abusing his brother."
For those of you who have have seen Kenneth Branagh in other films like this year's Valkyrie, his first major film triumph was 20 years ago when, at age 29, he directed and starred in Henry V. Perhaps the most memorable scene from that film was done in a four minute long shot of the bloodied battlefield after the vastly outnumbered English defeated the French (it was Shakespeare after all).
With the strains of the hymn "Non nobis domine" echoing from beginning to end, the planning and execution of such a long tracking shot was incredible. Watch it once to see the main action, and then watch it again to look at everything going on in the background that you didn't see the first time.
This shot, in my mind, rivals the Goodfellas shot of Henry Hill's first date in terms of uncut brilliance in direction and execution.
I just remembered how great this song is. Gabriel certainly wrote songs that spanned the gamut of styles from Sledgehammer to Biko to Moribund the Burgermeister. While I always loved his work with Genesis, and I enjoyed his solo work, I never obsessed over buying the "new" disc while growing up.
I got "turned on" to this song from, of all places, the film Angus, which included a sentimental scene that this song rose above. Gabriel has the perfect voice for this and I hope you like it too. Don't expect any hard rocking here... very mellow.
Want an idea of how much I wrote for lovehatethings over the second half of 2008? I've published my own eBook, which took little additional work other than layout. No supplication to publishers, no caring about money. Enjoy. It's FREE, and it's under Creative Commons license, so you may share and add value to your heart's content.
My two word review of the Fall TV Hit Glee, plus freaky-ass cereal mascots, how Patrick Swayze cost me my job, and how Tom Waits song titles become poetry.
Proving once again that Archos produces the best and coolest stuff that no one will ever hear about or buy. There's a marketing slogan you can be proud of. Maybe they can call it the iArchos or put this guy in a series of commercials opposite John Hodgman representing the Zune.
Alice - Jersey girl - Red shoes by the drugstore. Step right up. Come on up to the house 'til the money runs out. Anywhere I lay my head, please wake me up. Please call me, baby. T'ain't no sin. Lie to me.
Poor Edward - telephone call from Istanbul... Better off without a wife. Fumblin' with the blues, bad liver and a broken heart. The piano has been drinking: Drunk on the moon.
Annie's back in town... Hang on St. Christopher! Pasties and a g-string (at the two o'clock club) - Watch her disappear way down in the hole: Johnsburg, Illinois.
Danny says Annie's back in town. So it goes. Chained together for life, the wages of love, drunk on the moon, This one's from the heart. Watch her disappear. A good man is hard to find.
Buzz Fledderjohn - in shades - 9th & Hennepin. Oily night. In between love. Gin-soaked boy. Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis, Nighthawk postcards (from easy street), 16 shells from a 30-ought-six, $29.00, A sweet little bullet from a pretty blue gun, Old shoes: A sight for sore eyes.
I'm still here Lucinda, Bride of Rain Dog, Big Black Mariah, all you zombies, This one's from the heart. Misery is the river of the world; God's away on business; Everything goes to hell - cemetery polka.
The ocean doesn't want me. I want you. Picking up after you, I wish I was in New Orleans.
No one knows I'm gone. We're all mad here.
Closing time. Hang me in the bottle.
So long I'll see ya. Looks like I'm up shit creek again.
I don't think it's uncommon for many teenagers to grow up thinking that a job in a music or video store as being somewhat cool. You get to surround yourself with pop culture all day, every day, and (at least when I was growing up) had the ability to exercise that music snobbery so effectively portrayed by the clerks in High Fidelity or Empire Records.
And for a period of time, I had the opportunity to work in a video store when I was around 18 years old and going to university. While I enjoyed the job immensely, and planned on staying there for a period of time, I never thought that Patrick Swayze would cost me my job.
In as much as the part-time staff at a video store is made up of students trying to make supplemental education money, and the full-time staff (save the occasional owner/operator) is someone who is there as a way station, the average employee really lives by the basic tenet of: do as little as you can while still pulling in the minimum wage salary that's keeping you out of a fast food kitchen. From this general rule comes a couple of key realities: 1) anyone who shows any initiative whatsoever is a likely candidate for assistant manager, and 2) 15 to 18 year-old guys only show initiative for one thing, and it's not organizing a VHS inventory "fun day".
And so it came to pass that I was working in a video where the two "adult" managers had decided that the two "assistant" managers would be teenage girls. Now, let it be clear that I never coveted the job or begrudged the young women forced to oversee the occasional evening shift of the general ne'er-do-wells. I was quite happy slumming at the register, restocking the shelves or feasting on a slice of greasy pizza for dinner on the picnic table out back.
The one thing that did absolutely drive me insane however, was that both of the assistant manager were absolutely in LOVE with all things Dirty Dancing. When they worked the film played non-stop, sometimes for eight hours a shift. Maybe Bill Medley had the time of his life recording soundtrack fodder for the trite piece of cinematic drivel that was Dirty Dancing. But I wanted to sharpen a pencil and jam it in my ear after the third hour. I worked there for a year and the film never changed. Dirty Dancing from shift beginning to shift end whenever the young women were "managing". If enough of us ganged up and whined enough, we could arrange the occasional showing of Adventures in Babysitting when they went off on break... not much better I know, but a far cry from Swayze and Baby.
I soon learned that Swayze was the real culprit. For soon after the onslaught began Patrick Swayze pictures and posters started going up in the break room and magazines with his picture were left conspicuously under the register. I, through a complete lack of tactless honesty, had let it be known of my distaste for the film and everything to do with it. I could, therefore, never get away with destroying the store's dozens of copies or mangling the posters.
I would have to assert my revenge in another way.
You're probably wondering, at this point, how Swayze actually cost my job.
There was an unwritten rule in the store that once someone put a tape in, it would be allowed to finish. The tape choice was also decided by store rank. While I never was around long enough to hold such a position, the only time I had say over which tape was in the machine was 8:30am Sunday morning. The overnight guy was cashing out and I manned the front counter alone for half an hour before the "assistant managers" came in to help with the ongoing build of the post-church crowd that crescendoed around noon. One of those mornings I scoured the store, not only for something that I could live with, and was rated PG or lower, but something that disgust and revolt any of the Dirty Devotees.
I settled on a concert film. I settled on Pink Floyd at Pompeii.
For six glorious months of Sunday mornings I cranked the volume to eleven and freaked out many a church-goer and their children to the demonic strains of One Of These Days I'm Going To Cut You Into Little Pieces and Careful With That Axe Eugene. The psychedelic volcanoes exploding over the Italian ruins were enough send many a customer away from whichever section was nearby. I have to give credit to my assistant managers as they clearly hated my weekly selection, but respected the unwritten law. Although I knew I was in for three straight showings of DD when Floyd was done, Pompeii gave me a sense of poetic justice.
And we all were quite willing to grin and bear it until one Sunday morning the "adult" manager came in early and saw David Gilmour playing an acoustic guitar while a dog howled accompaniment in a studio clip. Said manager decreed that Pink Floyd at Pompeii was not an appropriate film to be shown at nine o'clock on a Sunday morning.
I calmly retorted that "Dirty Dancing was not an appropriate film to be shown to anyone with an I.Q. above 50, yet I was forced to watch it three times a shift."
He replied, "No one's making you watch it. You should be working anyway."
I tried to argue that my productivity suffered at having to be lulled into a soma-like trance by the horrible sappy music and hackneyed storyline.
He stammered that I should really consider if I truly wanted to be a proud family member of the store's staff.
Turns out... "no".
If it wasn't for Patrick Swayze's hunky good looks to all the teenage girls, I could've been king of the video store... not the most impressive title for sure, but how many kings do you know?
