Author Archive

Hey, have you ever seen…The Signal?

Jim:

I went to a party last year. Everybody started kissing each other, you know, at midnight. The tradition. How’d that start? Everyone starts kissing each other, and I had no one else to kiss, so I just as a joke kissed the dog. But then I realized when I got home that I made out with a dog for my New Years. It’s wrong.

If you had to come up with a double header that included Shaun of the Dead and one other film, and you had a theme, and that theme encompassed Shaun of the Dead, then it probably encompasses The Signal, and makes this the number two part of your double header.  Or the number one part, if Shaun of the Dead is going to be playing last.

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Hey, have you ever seen…The Science of Sleep?

Stephane:

This girl is at once all the women that broke my heart. She is so beautiful and generous and she is asking me to leave because she is dumping me. She is dumping me because I am a cheap drug dealer. And I am a drug dealer because she wants to leave me.

Ah Michel Gondry, you can do no wrong in my book.

This is another of those films that may be familiar to a lot of the usual contributors of DumbDrum, being the bunch of uber-nerds that we are, but that has sort of passed from the public consciousness almost as soon as it left theaters (if it ever made it there in the first place).  Even myself, I always am sort of taken aback when I see this DVD in the collection, like, “Oh…oh yeah!  That one!”  It’s the sort of movie that you can’t believe you forgot about after you’d forgotten about it, and it immediately gets tossed in the ole’ Panasonic for some enjoyment. Read more…

Hey, have you ever seen…After Life?

You died yesterday. I’m sorry for your loss.

We’re a day early this week, as real life butts in and schedules conflict.  Next week should be back on track, but in any case, onwards!

There was a point where I was employed at a certain large company and had the horrifying combination of very limited internet access and a lot of free time on my hands.  One of the sites I could get to was bestbuy.com because of some business partner agreement, so I would spend time browsing their movies for something to do, and I stumbled across this little number, much to my eventual happiness. Read more…

Hey, have you ever seen…In Bruges?

Harry:

An Uzi? I’m not from South Central Los Angeles. I didn’t come here to shoot twenty black ten year olds in a drive-by. I want a normal gun for a normal person.

The hardest part of this article was picking just one quote from what is an amazingly, amazingly funny and well-written script.  I haven’t seen Milk yet (it’s in the queue) but it better make Shakespeare look like a retarded child on methamphetamine drawing pictures on mommy’s fridge with “cat crayons” from the litterbox to have ganked the Oscar from this flick. It’s really, really well done. Read more…

Hey, have you ever seen… Death Race?

Hennessy:

Okay cocksucker. Fuck with me,and we’ll see who shits on the sidewalk.

Yeah, that’s right, I said it.  Death Race.  Not even the original.  I’m going to assault all sense of human decency and goodness you may have thought remained on this blog and drag it through the mud, laughing like a mad cannibal and strongly proclaiming my allegiance to France while firmly grasping my own genitals.  I’m recommending Death Race to you, because gosh darnit, it’s too much high caliber good times to pass up.  Plus, Brodie hated it, and that just makes it even better.  Let the desecration begin. Read more…

Danger Mouse shafted, shafts back.

Just a quick little blurb about this: apparently Danger Mouse’s record label EMI is going to shelf his latest album over some “legal battle”.  Danger Mouse, who is not very happy about the situation, is intead releasing a book full of photographs inspired by and based around the music (and taken by one David Lynch) and a blank CD-R, to be used “as you will” which translates roughly into “use the magic of the webernets and find my shit, and put it onto this disc.”  At least that’s my giant silly leap of logic.  I’m sure the Mouse didn’t mean it in that way.  All of this info and more thanks to Gizmodo.

How does this make you feel, deep down inside?

Hey, have you ever seen… A Very Long Engagement?

Bassignano:

Vengeance is pointless. Try to be happy and don’t ruin your life for me.

I don’t really get these Audrey Tautou flicks sometimes, this one and Amelie (both of which were directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet).  They’re playful, erratic, spontaneous and surprising, like a child who found a big-kid book and started arranging the pages in whatever fashion he wanted, taking bits and pieces of stories and placing them without regard for timeline or character, but somehow managing to put the beginning at the beginning, and the end at the end.  That’s not what I don’t get though, I understand that part.  What I don’t get is how Jeunet somehow managed twice to be so whimsical and yet still provide such a great emotional impact to go with the entertainment.  It’s a wonderful achievement. Read more…