An Attempt to Make Sense of The Fast and the Furious Franchise’s Titles
By Alex
Film franchises can be a tricky thing - while some are as carefully planned as the grid-system streets of New York (though frustratingly difficult to sit through because the first two movies don't have a fucking ending), others are like the sprawling, windy, clearly-improvised streets of some rural European town you barely remember visiting that one spring break. The latter kind can be especially difficult for the poor stiffs in the marketing department to handle, as each unexpected financial success births the next film in what was never intended to be a franchise.
Sometimes retconning is necessary (ie a little movie called Star Wars that was definitely not the fourth chapter of an epic pre-planned nine-chapter saga), or having the forethought/arrogance to just name your standalone film as if there'll be a shit-ton of sequels (usually involving a colon, or the main character's name followed by "and the..."). And there is, of course, the time-worn tradition of just slapping a 2 on the end of the second film & ascending in number from there, with an optional subtitle.
It's fitting that The Fast and the Furious franchise is far too fast and furious to stop and consider any of these possibilities, perhaps the only SIX-MOVIE franchise to not even give a fuck about any conceivable naming pattern. I feel like a plucky social worker trying to make sense of these troubled youths' shenanigans, with their cars and their bikinis and their house music, but I'll try to lay it all out for you nonetheless.
SNOOZE
By Alex
Whoa! Hey. We made a movie! It's all done & actually just got featured on The AVClub as part of the their Parameter short film competition. I was pretty excited about that. So excited I instagrammed it. YUP. Anyway, you can go watch it over here right now if that tickles your fancy. I would encourage you to do so. I would.
October Movie Playlist – HORRARTHON2K12
By Alex
Hello, dogs! Ol' DecentMess has certainly been sparse in the wake of that little movie we're still finishing up, but I have quite the sweet tooth for horror films 'round this time of year, so I couldn't resist clocking back in with another one of these. It turns out the silver lining(s playbook) of no-budget post-production is that I get a lot of (sometimes excruciating) wait-around time while one task or another is being readied/finalized in the "post house," aka "my apartment," so in spite of my business I've actually managed to check out a serious amount of horror flicks this month - I'm even keeping score over here, just for laughs. My score's embarrassingly high if you consider how many actual days of the month have elapsed, but, hey, why not try and take me on? Rack up your own points by watching all of THESE MOVIEEEES IT'S OCTOBER KIDS GET INTO IT
Times are included if you'd like to digest all of these as a massive 24hr HORRARTHON (it breaks my heart I don't have time to do that myself this year, sigh) or just take my thumbs-up and watch them at your leisure, you coward. EITHER WAY HAVE FUN WATCH MOVIES <3
MAKIN’ A MOVIE
By Alex
Hi readers (both of you). Just throwin' this out there, the site's gonna be pretty sparse for a bit. That's not even slightly out of the ordinary, except that I have a legit excuse this time - I'm makin' a movie! It's called Snooze and it's about lazy time travelers and we're shooting very soon. I've authorized various members of my crew to post whatever random pictures they want from this whole process on snoozefilm.com, if you wanna check THAT out. 'Til we're done, just enjoy that, or The Batman Drinking Game, or go read some other website or something.
BATMAN DRINKING GAME – VERSION 2
By Alex
OHHHHH YEAH KIDS! After extensive test marketing, the Batman Drinking Game is stronger than ever! YOU'VE GOT TO TRY IT. ROLL SIXES I KNOW YOU GOT IT IN YOU
Batman Drinking Game
By Alex
In celebration of that one movie coming out this weekend, I went ahead and made a printable board game just for you - it's the Batman Drinking Game!! Yeah. I thought you might like it. It's kind of a first draft, so let me know how you feel about it before I update the lil guy again.
Click through to its own page to see the whole thing & print it out & show everybody how cool you can be.
Could the Author Just Fucking Die Already
By Alex
I love analyzing things. I'm into DVD Commentaries and Wikipedia pages and interviews and IMDb Trivia and everything else, but there are times that I just wish all authors of everything were not even allowed to comment on anything. I dislike knowing that one of the best Indy moments in Raiders of the Lost Ark was because Harrison Ford felt sick that day and didn't want to shoot a whole fight scene, or that Ridley Scott says Deckard was a replicant (ugh, shut up, Ridley Scott) or any reason George Lucas did anything. There are some times I wish the author was too dead to tell me these things, hence, Death of the Author, which is basically the idea that when the author's done with their project, they're dead, and therefore no audience's theory or interpretation can be proven or disproven. David Lynch, for example, dodges a lot of shit by just saying he doesn't know why he did certain things (he's usually lying, and bless him for it - ten points, Lynch, well played). I think things are just more fun that way.
I bring this up because I recently gave The Walking Dead another shot, after giving up on its aimless and slow first season. I was told (by my brother, thanks, Eric!) that Season 2 really picks up, and it does (around the end of episode 7, definitely episode 8 - I know that's pretty late in the game for a TV show to get good, but I'm just happy it got there). I'll avoid spoilers, but there's a combination of moments in the second season's tenth episode, "18 Miles Out," that I really adored as thoughtful, dimensional additions to character. I was also totally fucking wrong and reading far more into them than the showrunners intended.
“Beer Here!”
By Andy
Something weird happened when I came to the UK. I tried a lot of beer, and most of it, I didn’t like. It wasn’t the room temperature of it, nor was it the lack of carbonation or its “flatness”. Putting it bluntly, the beers just weren’t interesting enough. Nothing struck me---good or bad---with a “whoa that’s different” moment. It’s like in older movies, where at a crime scene the cops shoo away onlookers, “Move along, nothin’ to see here! Nothin’ to see here!”
I wasn’t resolved in this opinion, but I was puzzled. What the hell is going on? We’re only separated by the Atlantic Ocean. How are the beer flavors and options so different… and so, honestly, lacking.
Dispatch Trailer: Game Over, Man
By Edward
Well, months of tinkering (and tailoring and soldiering and spying, god that was so dumb) are finally starting to pay off. I feel so bad for the chaps at the Prometheus base camp for having dropped their inferior trailer right before Dispatch's. Lord knows their views are gonna suffer.
Fuck.
After you successfully reattach your head to your body following that amazing piece of cinematic wonderland, continue on below to see our measly trailer and tell us what you think.
ALIENS (1986)
By Alex
I kind of like movies a whole lot, so I'd like to begin slowly cataloging my thoughts on all the shit I love. I thought it best to begin what will hopefully be a series of nerdlovefests with Aliens, one of the best scifi action movies ever made. And, yes, I mean the Special Edition/Director's Cut version of it, which may be two and a half hours long, but it's pretty close to perfect.
The original Alien is a great Sci-Fi Horror movie, almost a slasher movie on a spaceship, with the monster picking off the crew one by one. James Cameron apparently saw that movie and thought it'd be better to pit an army of those monsters against an elite human military squad, that fucking genius, and the result was Aliens seven years later. If Alien is a haunted house at a theme park, Aliens is the big scary roller coaster right next to it. Me, I like the roller coaster.
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