Movie blogging

Rae over at A Likely Story has a post about some arty movies she's seen as of late and highly recommends, both Oscar nominees for best foreign film category a couple of years back.

Speaking of Oscar nominees for best foreign films, I'd like to heartily recommend Escape from LA, the epic with Kurt Russell that came out a couple of years ago but got its attention stolen by The English Patient.

Now, I'm on record for my position that Escape from New York might very well be the greatest truly bad movie of all time. Escape from LA is truly horrible in every way: miscasting (Pam Grier playing a transvestite!), bad special effects (Kurt Russell's wig is worth price of admission in and of itself), and just sheer bastardization and buffoonification of an outstanding original piece of schlock. Just as Independence day schlockifies The Right Stuff AND Battlestar Galactica in the same breath (talk about mixing the sacred and the profane!), Escape from LA so thoroughly Kerryficates the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone with the "Hollywood is hell" movies of Robert Altman (like the dreadful The Player) to produce an outcome that is so nearly unwatchable, it's only possible to watch if you've lost the remote and you're in a hotel in St. Louis, Missouri, and it's raining and you've ordered a pizza from room service. Only then, in that narrow target audience, can the true value of the movie be appreciated.

The sole redeeming part of the movie is the story element that following a series of apocalyptic disasters, the US has become a police state which bans smoking, swearing, red meat, and all the good stuff. The key however is they've moved the capital from Washington to Lynchburg, Virginia.

Or, as its lovingly known around here as Lynch Vegas.

Yips! from Robbo: Let me hasten to add one other bright spot to EFLA: the presence of Mr. Steve Buscemi, poster-child of the American Orthodontic Association.