no country for bad movies

Good morning internet, how are you? Don't you know me? I'm your naîve son.

Today is the day, barring any disasters, when I pick up my new album! They're going to be ready at 4 pm. The suspense is killing me. Will the liner notes be accidentally typed in Spanish? Is my name spelled correctly? Are all the tracks backward ("I buried Paul"?)?

I'm not really worried about anything going wrong, but it's fun to pretend.

I'm shipping out on tour shortly as well. Take a trip to ZackHexum.com to make sure you're in the know. I've added some Southern California gigs in January, including the infamously famous 3 Hour Tour. More on this in future blogs.

The city of Los Angeles is working on a sewer near my apartment. I can smell their progress, and I'm not enjoying it.

*Movie opinion alert- if you have any plans on enjoying The Mist, skip the rest of this blog.*

Friday night I painted the town in movie-popcorn-butter yellow and saw "Stephen King's the Mist". Can I have a refund?

I'm a movie buff of sorts. Thanks to Rotten Tomatoes I've had a stellar six months as a moviegoer. Into the Wild, Michael Clayton, American Gangster, The Simpsons Movie, Gone Baby Gone, Rescue Dawn, Superbad and No Country For Old Men have all been thoroughly enjoyable. Unfortunately, Beowulf was a step in the wrong direction, and despite mostly decent reviews, The Mist was a leap off a cliff into murky, crap-filled waters.

I'm not going to give away the whole plot line of the movie, in part because I don't want to give this movie any more brain time than it's already receiving, and also because if you're a glutton for punishment you can still see this film and have your own set of "are you kidding me?" reactions.

Suffice to say a movie that leaves all but the most obvious metaphor on the cutting room floor and goes straight for the jugular with dialogue such as "I can't believe you think that, people are inherently good!" isn't going to be dissected in a humanities class anytime soon.

On a related note, Marcia Gay Harden's Old-Testament-Bible-thumper has to be the most over the top, unbelievable, nuance-free villain in modern movie history. She did a great job of being annoying (the audience clapped when bad stuff happened to her), but lawd almighty! I'd rather be trapped in an elevator with Dick Cheney. There's not a trace of humanity in her. Even Anton Chigurh, from No Country For Old Men, was more believable in his outright disregard for human life.

There's a scene involving tentacles that made the re-animation of Jabba the Hut, in the original Star Wars movie, seem like a well-executed and wise choice. As Butthead once said, "These effects aren't very special, Beavis." A slinky wrapped in tin foil would have looked more realistic.