DANGEROUS DAYS

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What is the single largest threat to our nation's impressionable youth? Reefer? Alcohol? Meth? Al Qaeda? Rap music?

No, folks. I have had a vision of the end and amongst all the fire and brimstone there was one face staring back at me with an evil, satisfied smile, joyously observing the chaos and destruction. It was the face of Lucifer himself, code name: Tyra Fucking Banks.

Back when she was just a former supermodel trying to break into the reality TV game with "America's Next Top Model," I didn't really have anything bad to say about Tyra. All I knew about her was that her body was pretty bangin' and that she did a stint on the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" way back before Will Smith was in every big budget sci-fi flick ever made.

She was harmless, really. But that's how they always start out. Then when she parlayed the success of her modeling series into a daytime talk show on network television, I thought, "Go girl! Make that money!" I wasn't mad at her.

However, that's when things started getting a little scary. After countless episodes watching her spout out armchair psychology to guests she brings on the show for the sole purpose of judging and condemning (under the guise of presenting the full spectrum of opinions), I started to ask myself -- what the hell qualifies this chick to get on a pedestal and pass judgment on anything, let alone the hot-button issues she so often tries to tackle in her quest to become the next Oprah?

I mean, let's be honest and go over the facts here. The only job she's ever had since her mid-teens is modeling. Her best friend is her mother. She's never gotten drunk or done drugs. She tried and failed at a music career. She tried and failed at an acting career (and continues to fail in her recent "Gossip Girl" guest spot).

She doesn't even have a college degree!

I'm not trying to be insulting, but generally when taking advice from someone, it's important to consider the source. For instance, you wouldn't get your matzah ball recipe from Mel Gibson, so why the hell would you even entertain Tyra Banks' thoughts on polyamory? Need I remind you that her best friend is her mom? I'm sorry, but this bitch knows nothing about polyamory!

But what about dating advice? That's an easy subject. She moved to Paris at 17 -- she must have had tons of experience with making dating mistakes, falling for the wrong guys, being taken advantage of for sex, making immature decisions without considering the consequences -- all the tragic things young girls go through trying to find themselves, right? Oh wait ... while she was supposed to be wasting away her late-teens doing coke rails off Parisian toilet seats and boning sleazy Euro-douche photographers on yachts in St. Bart's like any other self-respecting supermodel, she was sitting at home with her mom, painting her toenails and playing Scrabble.

The bitch is square!

What really gets me is when she attempts to talk about teens, especially females, having healthy body images. Don't get me wrong, I think kids today need an outlet to discuss these things, especially in a society that's so obsessed with sexualizing teens and promoting airbrushed ideals of beauty.

But again, consider the source.

You can tell kids, "Love yourself just the way you are," all you want, but when you show up on air with a different weave every episode and dedicate countless segments to beauty products that will help prevent wrinkles by smearing placenta on your face, you're kind of sending mixed signals.

"Sometimes, children, your natural beauty is a gift you should cherish and worship just the way it is, but sometimes it's a beast you should beat in line when it starts to deviate from the picturesque ideal you have in your head."

Recently, Banks debuted her new season on The CW by shelving the weaves for awhile and showing off her "real" hair as well as her slimmed down new physique. After her very public "kiss my fat ass" rally call a few seasons back, it would seem that Tyra herself has a hard time deciding if she wants to just be comfortable being a "normal person," as she implores her guests to do, or succumb to the strict standards of beauty that so offended her when she made that famous (as she'd have you believe) exclamation.

I'm not pointing these things out just to tear the woman down ... I simply feel like maybe she's not the right person to get up in front of millions of teens and act as some sort of guiding voice when she has neither a clear, consistent message nor the qualifications to educate youth without inadvertently turning their insecurities into full-blown psychological complexes.

But even that, folks, is not the real kicker here. Up until now I could live with the quagmire of Tyra's behavior. However, in light of the most recent season of "America's Next Top Model" Cycle 13 (aka "The Short Girl season") I can see a line in the sand quickly approaching.

It's obvious that Banks has had tons of success in the last decade of her career, to the point that she is inching ever closer to Oprah status with every new venture. Obvious, mostly because she never lets a second pass without reminding you just how spectacularly awesome she is -- whether it be by flaunting her Emmy wins, plastering oversized photos of herself over every inch of the Top Model house or by essentially acting like a big, voluptuous, tranny-fied pimp to the contestants, never for a moment allowing them to forget that she's given them everything and without her influence they would never even be considered by the modeling industry because of their height.

I only point this out because it's seeming obvious to me that the woman has become so successful that she no longer has anyone around her that will tell her "no" or slap some sense into her.

When it reaches the point that you are using the cross-promotion provided by your many television shows to attempt to coin new ridiculous phrases that you've made up yourself, hoping they'll catch on in the mainstream, you're about three to five years shy of Michael Jackson territory. When one reaches Michael Jackson territory (and yes, I believe that's the professional medical term), they are so insulated from reality by their own fame that it becomes impossible for anyone to realistically relay to them just how off their fucking rocker they truly are.

Like when someone with a straight face suggests that they stop calling them "makeovers" and instead call them "Ty-overs," as if that makes any kind of fucking sense whatsoever. Or shortening an already coined phrase "smile with your eyes" to one, easier to remember portmanteau - "smeyes."

Seriously, this is getting out of hand and believe me, it will only get worse unless someone stops this woman now before it's too late and we're all drinking Ty-Iced Tea at Star-Banks listening to Tyra's comeback album on our Ty-Pods.

Is that really the world you want your children growing up in?

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"Antichrist" is the latest in a long line of bleak emotional gut wrenchers that pit a solitary female lead against a wealth of horribly scarring situations from arthouse superstar Lars von Trier. The Danish director has received a whole slew of criticisms against the perceived misogyny and shock value of "Antichrist", which only serve to illuminate just how little most people actually pay attention during movies. Is this film misogynistic? Uh, noooooo. Does it deal with misogyny as one of it's themes? Like a motherfucker it does! A subtlety that most movie-goers can't seem to pick up on.

"Antichrist" reminded me a lot of Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of "The Shining". It's a very artsy take on the horror genre, relying more on psychological fear than killer-jumping-out-of-the-closet scares. It features a lead character that is a writer who loses her goddamn mind and turns violent in a secluded mountainy forest setting. Creepy, surreal imagery is abound. The husband/wife/child dynamic is explored and Charlotte Gainsbourg happens to look a lot like Shelley Duvall. The big difference is that "Antichrist" is way more overtly political in it's themes of gender roles and oppression.

It's easy to look at a film that features such an extreme female character doing such extreme things (uh, total understatement, btw...some of this is not for the faint of heart) as being sexist or misogynistic, as many critics obviously have, but doing so completely disregards the intent of depicting those things in the first place (and also half of the other content of the film). Was "American History X" a racist movie because it depicted racism? There's a huge difference between that and, say, the two racist-ass cultural stereotypes portrayed so obliviously in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen". Von Trier has a habit of putting his female leads through the ringer, but not necessarily out of some boner-inducing desire to see women suffer, but rather to illustrate just how much women do suffer in our male dominated world and how profound that suffering can be. Most importantly, he seeks to show that one, male or female, need not even be conscious of the oppression to actively participate in and contribute to it.

Give this some time if you're into: freaky shit, artsy-fartsy cinema, genital mutilation, gender identity, severe depression

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Okay, so a lot of people called me an idiot for not liking JJ Abrams' "Star Trek", yet most people can universally agree that "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a steaming pile of highly saturated, lens flaring, shaky cam shit. WTF, people? They're both written by the same motherfuckers! They both exhibit the same forays into total random stupidity. To point out the shittiness of one is to admit the same qualities exist in the other.

There isn't much to say about this movie other than it's just totally wanktastic. The colors are bright and shiny, the CGI is over-the-top and almost looks like stop-motion at times (not in a good way), the writing is ridiculously stupid and the story is just like...why? I'll admit that the Decepticons are pretty cool and the stuff in space was somewhat awesome looking, but beyond that it's just a total waste of time and money. If you're going to do mindless eye-candy, then for the love of all that's holy, do it with some kind of conviction! I like to see shit blowing up as much as the next guy, but if that's all you've got then at least make it a "rollercoaster ride of thrills and spills" and not just a "slowly moving escalator of stumbles and near misses". See "G.I. Joe" instead - at least you'll be mildly entertained.

The one thing I will say is that "T:ROTF" has some of the most heinous displays of racism portrayed on film since "Birth of a Nation".

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I dig Sam Raimi for the most part. Some minor "Spider-Man" mistakes aside, he's usually pretty entertaining in that tongue-in-cheek kind of way, so I was pretty excited by his return to the horror genre with "Drag Me To Hell".

It was everything you expect from Sam Raimi. Some gross-out/totally-impossible-and-therefore-comic violence, some fast, quirky camera work, some humorous dialog and a few real scares...unfortunately, it just wasn't doing it for me. There were cool elements and the potential for a great movie in there, but I couldn't stop myself from thinking "huh...this movie is actually kinda racist!"

Now, I'm not saying it's intentionally racist - they don't use any slurs or anything outright offensive - no, it's the more subtle (and much more prevalent) kind of racism that's caused by someone not even stopping to consider what they're portraying on screen. Every ethnic character in this movie is some sort of spooky mystical medium and every spooky mystical medium in this movie is some kind of ethnic, so it's like everything weird, supernatural and scary is some exotic "other" and everything "normal" is blond hair, blue eyes. I don't think the Raimi Bros. are out to make any statement with that fact - it's just something I personally find really annoying because it's such a ubiquitous form of racism that's so easily remedied. Why not make the lead chick ethnic to balance it out, for instance? Oh, but that would never happen! And that's another reason this shit is kinda racist. They fill up all the side roles with the colored folks, but the main characters are always white. So yea - double subtle racist.

It's not a bad movie at all, it's entertaining enough - I just didn't like it.

Give this some time if you're into: Justin Long's banter, Raimi trademarks, Evil Dead, Darkman, horror in general, seeing shadows projected onto any and everything.

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It took me awhile to finally get around to seeing this movie - mostly because I'd already seen "Da Ali G Show" years ago, been underwhelmed by "Borat" and unimpressed by the trailers. "Brüno" was a lot better than I expected though.

Of course, it wasn't all laughs. There were jokes that fell flat or felt played out, but there were also parts that were just too LOL-worthy to pass up. And best of all, it's only an hour and twenty minutes, so it doesn't get the chance to ever get too tedious.

I heard through the grapevine that a lot of gays were offended by this movie because it portrays gay stereotypes. The only conclusion I can come to on that is that they never bothered to watch the movie or any of Sacha Baron Cohen's other projects. Or maybe they're just as ignorant as the people he parodies in this film. Either way, they totally missed the point. What's funny about Cohen's comedy isn't the stereotypes he employs, but the reactions those stereotypes elicit from people. You're supposed to laugh at how uncomfortable these people become when someone they think is a flaming queer is gyrating his crotch in hotpants mere inches from their faces - it's like Hitler himself is holding their first-born child's freshly skinned corpse over a tub of acid. They're stupid and that's funny.

It's also funny that people who deem themselves qualified to run for president, who presume to represent the people of America and their interests are so easily hoodwinked by a man who has been famous all over the world for over a decade now. I'm sorry, but if you don't know who Ali G is in the year 2009 then you simply aren't relevant. What if Ahmadinejad throws you some "rezpekt" (*snap)? You're not even gonna know what he's talking about and you'll make a fool out of us in front of the whole world. Maybe Ron Paul has been too busy worrying about the Gold Standard to bother realizing what year it is, but surely someone in his entourage has flipped on a TV in the last 10 years and seen enough to go "oh hey, I recognize that dude!" But no...

Give this some time if you're into: All things S.B.C. (not the phone company), laughing at ignorance, close ups of penises flopping in every direction

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I was lucky enough to see one of the 3D IMAX screenings of the 15 minute extended preview for James Cameron's long awaited film "Avatar" yesterday. There has been a fair amount of hype regarding this film, it's use of 3D technology and it's advancements in CGI and I can safely say that the hype is mostly deserved. I say only mostly because it's incredibly hard to describe the effect of "Avatar" without overselling it. It's amazing, awe-inspiring and engrossing, but when you say that to someone it's like they expect that it's going to cure baby orphans of cancer or something. It doesn't. But it did suck me in like no movie ever has before.

If you've only seen the 2D trailer on the internet, it's easy to dismiss the film as looking cartoony, video gamey and "cool, but nothing revolutionary". Watching it in 3D, however, is a whole other experience. The Na'vi look like real creatures inhabiting real space. The environments are spectacular and photo-realistic (as photo-realistic as an alien planet with bio-luminescent plantlife can be) - aside from the parts you know must be CGI because nothing like them exists in real life, you don't even think about the fact that this whole planet is a green screen. The character CGI is truly impressive. You can see every single pore on the Na'vi's skin, every hair on their heads. You could see every iridescent scale on the dragon-like creature's body and the subtle contours of every tooth in their mouths. Did it look real? No, but that's because all of these things are obviously not real - but they looked pretty fucking cool! Obviously it still looked like a movie, not like virtual reality, but there are moments when you forget that it's a movie because of how used to seeing things in 2D we've become. It tricks your mind, if even for a second.

The only problem I had with the experience was the 3D glasses provided by IMAX. They reuse the motherfuckers so the lenses are kinda warped a little, which created a weird bloom effect with the edges of really bright objects. A few people I talked to experienced the same thing. Hopefully they'll produce their own glasses for the movie's release.

Otherwise, I officially have a full-on boner for this movie and can't wait until December 18th. James Cameron is one of the best genre filmmakers in the world and so far I've been nothing but impressed by what I've seen of "Avatar". I'm hoping more than anything that this movie will light a fire under people's asses and get them to step up their game.

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One of my favorite sci-fi movies of the 80s was "Alien Nation". I'm not ashamed of this. But if you were to give that buddy cop flick about a race of aliens trying to integrate into life on Earth the Ron Moore style "Battlestar Galactica" reboot for modern times you'd most surely get something very close to "District 9". That's not an insult. Neil Blomkamp's directorial debut takes the same general concept as the Mandy Patinkin/James Caan movie, removes all of the hokeyness from the equation and makes it relevant to our times. It asks the question "what would happen if an alien mining ship filled with millions of hive-minded worker drones was stranded on Earth, cut off from their commanders" and then proceeds to play that concept out in a very realistic, but satirical manner.

The result is probably the best movie I've seen this year, hands down (though there's still "Avatar" to look forward to, of course). Usually, and especially with "summer blockbusters", you have to hit up several different films to satisfy the range of your intellectual interests. You go to "G.I. Joe" to get your whiz-bang action fix and maybe to "Virtuality" to scratch that itch for high-concept, intellectual sci-fi and then to something like "Thirst" to fill that artsy fartsy "I'm a serious filmmaker" void, but "District 9" is like one stop shopping. The conceptualist in me was intrigued by the ideas presented and the conclusions drawn about human nature and the dynamics of society - and yet the total geek in me was psyched to see badass alien mechs and crazy energy weapons that make people explode into bits on contact. Even the artfag in me was in awe watching the arbitrary beauty of the documentary-style handheld cinematography that captured the patchwork slums and urban decay of Johannesburg, South Africa. All sides were equally satisfied.

I know I've stated that there are some similarities to "Alien Nation" here, but this is not a remake or a reboot, it's not trying to cash in on your nostalgia or bank on an already successful property - it's an original concept that was widdled into an original movie by people who give a fuck about making good movies. See, Hollywood? See what happens when you come up with a cool idea and work tirelessly to bring it to life without hacking away at anything that might be deemed questionable to the lowest common denominator? You get a WIN, not a FAIL. Grab a post-it and jot that shit down.

Give this some time if you're into: Aliens, Battlestar Galactica, Alien Nation, City of God, Cops, just plain entertaining shit.

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Chan-Wook Park, the director of "Oldboy", "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" and "Lady Vengeance" directing a vampire movie? I'm fucking there!

"Thirst" is the story of a middle-aged Catholic priest who contracts vampirism during a blood transfusion and then struggles with the effects it has on his life, his faith and his view of humanity as a whole. It's got everything you expect from Park - lush visuals, heavy psychological drama, surrealism, a dark bend, sex, violence...you know, all the reasons you watch movies. The only thing it's lacking from Park's usual repertoire is an amazing score, which does hinder the movie a bit. But aside from that, it's pretty great! A lot of the subtleties of "Thirst" will probably be lost on most viewers, however. There seem to be a lot of cultural things that don't really make sense to non-Koreans, but it doesn't necessarily make it any less interesting, just makes you scratch your head and wonder "WTF was that all about" at times.

This is yet another genre film that calls into focus just how lame we Americans have become in recent years. While we're churning out angsty-emo-kid bloodsuckers a la "Twilight"** and glorified romance-novel, Elvis-meets-Fabio style vamps in "True Blood"**, the rest of the world is coming up with unique takes on the mythology like this one, "Let the Right One In" (Sweden) and hell, even "Blood: The Last Vampire" (Japan). And, as usual, the general American public doesn't even seem to give a fuck. Maybe they don't know what they're missing...or maybe they just truly like overwrought crap.**

Give this some time if you're into: dark Korean movies, all things Chan-wook Park, vampires, religious crises, twisted acts.

**Sorry friends...I know some of you actually love this shit, but come on...you have to admit it's crap on more levels than not.

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Ok, I stand corrected. When I heard they were making a live-action "G.I. Joe" movie my natural response was a little bit of 'meh' mixed with a dash of *barf* finished off with a pinch of WTF. But honestly, how could you blame me? That kind of thing usually goes horribly wrong, right? Transformers, Scooby Doo, Inspector Gadget...I mean, it's not exactly a strong track record of translating Saturday morning cartoons into live-action blockbusters.

Who knew? This movie is actually pretty awesome! Sienna Miller's questionable acting aside, most everything in "G.I. Joe" works - even Marlon Waynes! I know, right? But he only really slips on a few bits of dialog, which is really impressive considering his past tendencies. Usually I hate the wacky, ethnic comic relief sidekick bit in Hollywood movies, but strangely the writers actually elevated that role in "G.I. Joe". Not only does he live through the closing credits, but he also gets the chick AND saves the day while the white guy heartthrob is basically off chasing some pussy. That rarely happens, folks!

The element that ultimately makes this movie the shit is that the action is straight on point. That may not seem like a big deal because every summer movie has action in it these days, but rarely is it ever done right. You'll find no slow dolly tracking around choreographed martial arts battles in this film, nor will you find seizure inducing shaky-cam that renders all the action into blurs of grainy chaos. It's just old-fashioned anime influenced perfection that doesn't call too much attention to itself and just lets you sit back and go "Oh, shit!" Some of the CGI is shotty, but I've seen worse in bigger budget movies than this.

The bottom line is - what do you expect out of a G.I. Joe movie? What do you expect from the guy who directed "The Mummy"? You expect a spectacle of things blowing up, people saying stupid shit while wearing silly outfits and doing backflips while shooting machine guns. Do you like that kind of shit? Yea? Then check it out. This isn't fucking Wim Wenders though. It is what it is and it's more fun to watch than most of the crap that tries to fill that void.

Why the fuck does the guy that never utters a word need a mouth though?

The world may never know.

Give this some time if you're into: action, cartoons, anime, explosions, jets, motorcycles, power armor, British guys being the president of the US