HEY! Something NEW! Here’s a guest blog from our very excellent friend Pavel Podolyak. You can check out his rantings about current politics (and now celebrity commentary) at his blog The Pragmatist. Here’s his take on the career of Nicolas Cage. – DJ

Hollywood has reached a special milestone with the most ridiculous movie of the decade.

(major spoilers ahead)

In every area of entertainment there is always a goofy but lovable character or group that keeps trying regardless of the endless failures and social ridicule. Basketball has The Knicks, music has Christian metal, and Hollywood has Nicolas Cage. This man carries the heaviest of burdens: trying to appear as a lead actor in one good movie (by his own criteria) before he dies while playing a role of somebody who dies.

You might be confused and object, “but what about Spike Jonze’s Adaptation? That was great! and The Rock! That was neat too! err, Leaving Las Vegas!”

It would seem that Adaptation is the pinnacle of Cage’s career and also a good movie. And it is. However what really got imbeded psychologically into Cage’s brain is the Oscar that he got for playing an alcoholic on a mission to drink himself to death in Leaving Las Vegas. He was 31 years old when playing a tortured soul on a mission of self destruction provided the greatest positive reinforcement an actor can get.

Cage thus learned a valuable lesson back in 1995. “To become great I must destroy myself on film.” He set out to do just that on a life project that grew beyond his control.

Obviously he didn’t think he was already past his prime after getting the Academy Award. At that tender age, people are at the peak of their cognitive powers and think they’ll keep improving indefinitely. What ended up happening is that no other actor has appeared in more movies where the role seems to be to either directly or indirectly commit suicide or be killed during some martyrdom operation. No, this is different than stuntmen actors or typecast Mafia wiseguys who die often by somebody else’s hand. This is self inflicted.

Lets begin with a few examples to see what led to Cage’s pinnacle of madness that is Knowing.

1. The Rock – Cage goes on what appears to be a suicide mission to rescue hostages. As he dies from chemical weapon, he jabs a saving andrenaline needle into his heart (which if done in a wrong way will kill). He saves many lives and appears to be killed by a fiery explosion. Yet he lives.

2. Face Off - Cage goes on what appears to be a covert suicide mission by cutting off his own face and putting on a face of a mass murderer (played by another epic tortured soul John Travolta) who killed Cage’s wife. Cage is a good guy wearing the face of a bad guy. He is driven to madness but saves his son and lives.

3. City of Angels – Cage commits suicide right away for love. What? Well he is an immortal angel you see who falls in love with a human and becomes a mortal human to be with her. He doesn’t even get to be with her since he dies.

4. Snake Eyes – Cage decides to risk his life for love. He helps a woman who is marked for death. He lives but goes to prison.

5. 8mm - Cage decides to risk his life to find out who killed a young woman. He continues on even after it increasingly becomes a suicide mission. He is driven to madness and slaughters the perpetrators. He lives but dies inside.

6. Bringing out the Dead – Cage saves lives while slowly dying inside. He finds salvation in a young woman but merci kills her father. He lives.

7. Windtalkers - Cage goes on repeated suicide missions during WW2. He is both a good guy and a bad guy who mercilessly slaughters Japanese. He saves the life of a comrade while getting shot and killed.

8. Adaptation - Cage plays two characters who are twin brothers. The fun loving happy and life filled brother gets killed. The loser writer brother lives. Cage manages to die and survive in one movie.

9. World Trade Center – Cage is a firefighter goes on a borderline suicide mission to save lives in a burning WTC. He gets trapped in the rubble and goes into a coma. He lives but everybody else dies.

10. Vampire’s Kill – Cage thinks he died and became a vampire. He tried to kill himself (again in his mind) but doesn’t have what it takes. Not to worry since somebody else kills him later.

Now things start getting strange as Nicolas Cage decides to consciously kill his own serious career by appearing in movies for children and obvious B movie horror flicks. First we see National Treasure and then the final legs of the journey are completed.

11. Ghost Rider – Cage is playing a person who goes on suicide mission stunts. He is also committing career suicide by starring in a B movie designed for the borderline retarded. Cage dies in a fire but is brought to life as an anti-hero who is on fire and in constant pain. Cage goes full circle and goes from being human to an angel of death by dying. He err, lives as an undead avenger who is always on fire.

12. The Wicker Man – Cage is a cop and fails to save a woman and a girl who dies in a fire. He drinks lots of liquor and finds out that his ex-wife is missing. Yes, out of love Cage decides to find her and goes to an island controlled by a matriarchal pagan cult. He increasingly begins to believe that the woman he’s looking for was either killed by being burned at the stake or is about to. He finds out that not only is she alive but the whole thing was an elaborate set up to burn Cage alive in a ridiculous ritual. His mind snaps. Cage finds himself trapped in an unnecessarily large wicker man and dies in a fire.

*drum roll*

Move aside The Passion of the Christ. Knowing has Nicolas Cage as both Noah, a willing martyr dying a horrible death, and the father of the only male chosen to be in the new garden of Eden.

What? Yes, we’ve come to the most ridiculous movie of the decade and one that Cage will not be able to top. This movie also combines an incredible number of genres. It is a horror movie, an action movie, an apocalyptic movie, a movie catering to Christians, a mystery movie, a sci fi movie, a B movie, as well as a Blockbuster summer movie. It is a movie to end all movies. The equivalent of a deep fried Big Mac broken up onto a deep crust pizza. An epic movie that will liquefy your mind and spirit into goo. This movie represents a dimensional flux where Cage and Hollywood merge together in an attempt to make the audience surrender and join them in a self destructive behavior of watching and enjoying movie trainwrecks (in turn, becoming part of the wreckage themselves).

13. Knowing - Cage’s wife died (not in a fire) and he has a son that he looks out for. Cage is a meteorology professor who drinks a lot. His son gets a letter from a 1959 time capsule. The letter lists all the dates of major disasters and numbers of people killed by them. Yes, some disasters didn’t happen yet. Cage risks his life trying to save people but they all die anyway and he is almost killed. A jetplane for example almost smashes into Cage’s car as he is waiting in traffic. He runs to rescue survivors who are burning alive. Total insanity.

He then meets a woman whose mother wrote the letter all those years ago. She has a daughter. It appears that Cage found a love interest but all is in vain. He finds out that the final disaster will kill everybody on the planet by burning them alive. It will be caused by a solar flare that he cant do anything about.

Yes, Cage comes to a realization that he cannot save anybody this time and also has knowledge that he and his son will die. This is it. Also, Cage’s apparent potential love interest dies before he can even die with her a little later. He is stuck with her daughter.

Ah, but wait a second audience. In the final minutes of the movie, an alien mothership descends and tells Cage’s son telepathically that he is chosen to go with them along with the little girl (they are all special and connected of course).

Cage logically wants to go on the mothership with his son and a young girl. The aliens say that he can’t go since only the two children were chosen. Cage insists that he go with them and aliens appear to be fine with that. Then Cage changes his mind at the last moment and decides to stay behind and burn alive with everybody else. His son could care less and the children go into the mothership that leaves Cage whimpering on the ground in madness and horror. Then he goes back to his city. The solar flare comes and all of humanity burns alive.

Cage’s son and the young girl find themselves in Eden by a tree of knowledge.

It is the end of the line for an actor who is used to playing characters at the end of the line. Knowing has increased chances of Nicolas Cage committing suicide in real life 10 fold. Hopefully that doesn’t happen and Cage is reborn to save us all another day.

Every viewing of the Back to the Future trilogy provides the audience with something new. I don’t think I need to go into much depth as to why Back to the Future is one of the greatest series of films ever put to the silver screen. The creation of Back to the Future was a watermark in the history of entertainment; they are nothing less than legendary. At the end of every single Back to the Future movie I cannot help but think “this is true art.”

Absolute Perfection.

The beauty of the movies is the plethora of questions, conundrums and paradoxes that they conjure. I just breezed through the first couple Back to the Futures this weekend and I noticed a couple things. First a quick one: What is going through Jennifer Parker’s head at the end of the first film? This is what we know about Jennifer Parker: 1) She is dating Marty McFly, 2) Though they are dating it can’t be too serious yet because Marty is so pumped just to get her grandmother’s phone number, 3) Jennifer and Marty plan on going to “the lake” soon…and I think it’s safe to assume that they are so excited about this because it will be their first time sleeping together…don’t tell me that no one else thought that was implied.

So, that’s the little bit about Jennifer Parker that we hear early on in the movie, during the “exposition” if you will. Then everything else happens in the movie and we don’t see Jennifer Parker again until the end of the film, the “conclusion” if you will. Everything seems hunky dory; Jennifer and Marty are ready to “go to the lake” in Marty’s “new car.” Wait, wait, wait!!! BAM!!! The Back to the Future guys are already sure they are making a sequel!!! Doc Brown pulls up in the new DeLorean and has news to tell the young virgin Jennifer Parker.  He so discretely announces: YOU TWO GET MARRIED AND THEN SOMETHING GETS FUCKED UP!!! QUICK HOP INSIDE MY FUTURE CAR AND LET’S GO ALTER THE SPACE TIME CONTINUUM.” Doc Brown then added, “So you won’t be able to go to the lake yet.”  Then, looking towards Jennifer Parker, he says, “Hello, my name is Emmet Brown. I built this future car. Nice to meet you.”

Jennifer Parker has roughly eight seconds (while Doc Brown loads old beer and a banana into the future car) to think about what she has been told. Without much delay she loads herself into the future car with her future husband and heads off into the future. What, I ask, is Jennifer Parker thinking?

Feel free to respond with your own thoughts in the comments. For now I’ll go with my first instinct: Marty McFly is just that good-looking.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, THE MAIN EVENT!!!  Here are my top three times that a member of the Tannen family got covered in shit. Let the games begin!!! The third place prize goes to:

3) When Buford Tannen Gets Covered With Shit

By the time the audience reaches the last movie in the trilogy everyone is asking the same question, “How is a truck full of shit going to crash into Biff Tannen?” As you should know, the movie is set mostly in the Wild West, a place devoid of Biff Tannen. But lo and behold! Buford Tannen is Biff’s great-grandfather and he is also a dick and he also has a grudge against the McFly family. Parallelism!!! Let me fast forward, Buford Tannen eventually gets covered in shit. It is still a gratifying scene, but I have some problems with it. First, it’s not a truckload of shit. When I see a Tannen get covered in shit I like it to be a literal truckload of shit. I understand there are no trucks in the Wild West, but I would have also accepted a train full of shit crashing into Buford Tannen. Also, the shit that he gets covered in is too green. I like the 50′s style brown shit. It has much more of a “classic shit” appeal.

My qualms aside, it is still a terrific scene. Getting completely covered in shit is such a horrible fate. No one ever wants to get covered in shit. I don’t know what you do after you get covered in shit. Well, I guess, shower. Showering is a good first step, but what then? You still always know that you have been covered in shit at some point. Shit, something that another being has deemed useless and smelly, now covers your entire body. Think about that.

2) When Biff Tannen Gets Covered With Shit Again

My second favorite time a Tannen gets covered with shit is in Back to the Future Part II. After unsuccessfully chasing down a hover-boarding Marty, Biff crashes right into a huge truck full of shit!!! Ha ha ha!!! Perfect!!! Biff really deserved it too. He had this great, powerful, villainous, Ford sports car and he had a good quarter mile to catch up with Marty, who is foot-pumping a floating skateboard. Of course, Biff fails and then comes the shit. The beauty of this scene is that Biff’s car gets covered in shit….RIGHT AFTER HE GOT IT BACK FROM THE SHOP THAT CLEANED THE SHIT OUT OF IT!!!

Shakespeare himself could not write that kind of irony.

1) When Biff Tannen First Gets Covered With Shit

Yes, of course, the big winner. My favorite time that a Tannen gets covered with shit is the first time that Biff Tannen gets covered with shit. A terrific scene. Marty stands up to the Biff crew, thereby sparing his father a lifetime of shame, and then invents skateboarding. The chase ends with Biff careening into a massive truck full of shit. Hilarious. Some of Biff’s goons could have easily died. Imagine getting covered in so much shit that you died? Not even metaphoric shit. Not an end-of-the-semester “Oh, I have so much shit to get through.” No, literally buried in shit. I wonder what Biff would say if you told him that in just a week or so he would be getting covered in shit again. I think I know what he would say. He’d say what he’ll eventually say, “I HATE MANUREEEE.”

Let me ask you this, reader: How many times per year does an American get covered with shit by surprise?
I’ll explain those stipulations. I say American because, let’s be honest, for all I know those other countries are jumping around in shit all day. Next point: they have to be completely covered. Getting a bird crap splatter does not count. If a flock of birds unleash a hailstorm of shit that leaves you immobile, that would count. You have to be completely covered, so that only your head and shoulders reach the surface. Lastly, it has to be by surprise. Maybe there is some job out there that involves shit-swimming. That wouldn’t count. It must be a surprise and/or accidental shit burial.

I’ll go through some other memorable times people have been covered with shit on film (all of these don’t fit my criteria above):
8 Crazy Nights: One of the characters gets covered in shit from a port-a-potty, thus creating a “Poopsicle”.- Disqualified because it is animated and unrealistic.
Slumdog Millionaire: The kid falls into shit in the beginning.- Disqualified because it is not in America.
Shawshank Redemption: Andy Dufresne crawls through shit to his freedom. -Disqualified because it was not an accident or surprise…Andy planned to crawl through that freedom shit.

I can’t really think of any other instances. Maybe the guys from Jackass jumped in shit once; I can see that happening. I asked DJ this question and he guessed 150 or something per year. I figured 30-40? But, I’m thinking about it now and even 30-40 times per year seems high. I can’t think of a situation aside from falling into a cesspool somehow. Also nowadays we don’t have those troublesome shit-trucks that Biff kept running into.

I’ll leave the voting up to America. We got to vote for “Dancing With the Stars” and we got to vote to decide if Jon and Kate would get divorced, so why not just vote on a statistic:

[poll id="10"]

It’s my understanding that we have a lot of international readers. So for their benefit, I’ll briefly describe what we in American call an “election.” You see, once every few years, when hack comedians run out of bad jokes about our beloved president, another man challenges his throne. Then we watch “pundits” bicker about the merits of these two men on TV for about three years. When the American people decide they can’t take it anymore, the men choose other men as their partners through civil union and the pundits argue about the partners’ merits for another six months or so. Finally, if the groundhog doesn’t see its shadow, three states get to choose who our next president will be. This year, the man who won wore black face in tribute to the great minstrels of our country’s glorious past. Of course, he’s not any different than you or me or the last president, for that matter.

Apparently they’re holding erections in Iran now- Did I jus- HAHAHAHAHAHA. OHHHHH WHEW! Wow… that was crazy. Iran is holding elections over there now. As with any election, this one has had its fair share of problems. Held on Friday(?), the elections were really important, I guess. According to some reliable sources, Iran has been fucking around with nuclear weapons, or something. Unlike in the good old US of A, the Iranians couldn’t choke down the cold hard facts. Instead of realizing that they are a silly display not unlike the WWE, Iranians expected the words “change” and “hope” to actually mean something. It’s like they believe every movie they see over there. In their defense, there are only three movies available in Iran and they’re all documentaries.

You really want the Iranian Steven Spielberg running your country? Didn’t you see the last Indiana Jones?

So, in an unprecedented display of machismo and huge fucking nuts (being the opposite of giant, crying, pussy), Presidential Candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi claimed the elections were rigged in favor of current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. To be honest, I don’t see it. I mean President Ahmadinejad did get 62% of the vote (a total of 13 voters made up mostly of his own staff) versus 33% for Moussavi and the obligatory 5% of crazies split between Ron Paul and Ralph Nader.  Mr. Moussavi, you should be ashamed of yourself. Seriously, your country is suffering from riots, its citizens are having their rights taken away and war with a super power is imminent and all you can think about is how you didn’t win an election? What are you going to tell me next, that this Pall Mall 100 isn’t going to soothe my sore throat? Puh-lease!

You see, here in America, we accept the harsh truth that a puppet government forces us to – we have no control over what happens ever. So what? You want to be burdened with making decisions which might affect someone other than yourself? Say Moussavi got elected and turned out to be a total nutjob and didn’t wear pants to work every day. You want to be responsible for that? Didn’t think so. A wise ex-English teacher once taught me a valuable lesson: the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. Which generally holds true, unless that devil has demonstrated his inability to lead or string together coherent thoughts time and time again, James.

This guy gets shit done.

The point is this – it doesn’t matter and it never will. In fact, I’m fairly certain that every event I just mentioned was entirely fabricated by the media for their own amusement. No shit. For instance, I caught Anderson Cooper saying the following at dinner the other night:

We make everything up. There are more factual events taking place on Spike’s Deadliest Warrior.

I may or may not have actually heard that at dinner the other night. Come to think of it, I’ve never even met Anderson Cooper, but I did once hear his voice set to ominous music in a documentary on Google Video, so he might as well have been sitting in my living room revealing all his dirty, silver haired secrets, of which I’m sure there are many. According to some of his peers, that old queen hides a secret about as well as an elephant hides its trunk.

In the end, what will probably happen is the American people will once again be forced to watch the same view of the Missile Command championships in night-vision on CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS (yeah, assholes, you got listed after Fox), and a plethora of other shit-stain networks as our country bombs the fuck out of Iran for one reason or another. After two weeks of that, it’ll probably be football season and, frankly, most of us can’t be bothered – with the way the league is shaping up this year (what drama!), who could even blame us? Football rules and Iran drools.

Anyone who has read the site before knows that I am a tremendous fan of the Star Wars series. Actually, I just did a quick search of the site and it looks like I have no posts up that focus on Star Wars…interesting, I distinctly remember comparing Kevin Federline to a fallen AT-AT walker, but I guess that was just a pleasant dream I once had. Well, though I have no previous blog to prove it to you, trust me, I am a tremendous fan of the Star Wars series. I consider my knowledge of the movies (particularly the good three) to be fairly encyclopedic. I will admit that once those three prequels came out I did start losing touch and I imagine an expert could get some trivia past me. Nonetheless, I remain a huge fan of the saga, so you can imagine my surprise when I went into the cinema today and saw that…BOOM!…there is a new Star Wars out right now!!!

I couldn’t believe my eyes and immediately ran to the ticket counter without thinking twice. I said, “Ma’am I’ll take one adult ticket for the next showing of Star Wars!!” The woman started ringing me up, then paused a second and said, “Wait do you mean–” But I cut her off, “Ma’am I mean exactly what I said, you are looking at the biggest Star Wars fan around!!” She seemed confused, probably at the intensity of my fandom, but handed me the ticket anyway and reminded me to “Enjoy the show.” To which I said, “Thank you ma’am, and may the force be with you.” Why? Because I’m hilarious and that’s a hilarious thing to say before you go see the new Star Wars!!!
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Hello internet world, its me, your American Hero with another movie review. This time I’m soder and ready to rip the shizzle out of one of the worst movies of all-time. So hold onto your keyboards as I go off on this terrible movie.

So I get to the theatre a little outside San Jose to see The Knowing. I knew very little about the movie except that it was about the end of the world and one of my favorite actors, Nicolas Cage, was in it. So I was pretty amped up for this movie and ready for Nicky boi to put an end to the end of the world. So after buying my ticket at the great price of 4.50!…unheard of in San Jose…I got some popcorn and a little so-derrr pop and headed into the theatre.

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I recently downloaded season two of 30 Rock and was treated to the hilarious episode titled “Greenzo.” Man, that Alec Baldwin/Tina Fey combination is something else. They legitimately make me laugh out loud. The guest star in this episode, however, makes me want to give myself a spinal tap. Similarly, I downloaded the first two episodes of the current season of Scrubs. Again, the cast is generally pretty brilliant and again, the guest star gives me chills from being so unfunny. These two guest “stars” have one thing in common (besides the ability to make me wretch in front of my TV). They were both main characters on the disturbingly popular Friends.

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It seems the easiest to read, funniest posts on this shit stain of a website are lists. We really strive to be creative and interesting, but sometimes these things just fall flat on their faces. Take, for instance Things I Am Better at Than Roy Verspoor by Patty. Yikes. If we can, we like to avoid train wrecks like that. Sometimes, though, the concepts for lists are funnier than the list itself, and therefore worth presenting to everyone on planet earth with unrestricted Internet access (sorry, China). Here are nine that I personally thought would rule, but instead just drool.

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