THE STEADY LEAK RELOADED #3

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The Set Up.

Seeya Devin!

You as a readership has lost a very strong voice and writer for this site, for now. Devin’s words will ring loud again in the coming months and in the meantime he’s all over Formspring and Twitter like an animal. He won’t be back here, but he’ll be somewhere and when he announces where you’ll understand. This is a special place of magic and stardust, but where he’s going he’ll get to do similar stuff and not have to deal with trolls and news and me [though I think I was a very good boss].

You lose a Devin, but you gain a Nick. Not a fair trade if you want deep and insightful film journalism but I have my strengths and some would say the site’s been missing some of them for a while. I’m back and very driven. And I’m bringing some friends with me, some old, some new, and some that are young and lucky as hell to be thrown right in the fire.

All hail the new CHUD.

We’ve been busy. We’re launching a new site in November that is much more mainstream and diverse, but still bursting with personality and opinion. I’d call it a sister site but it has so much weight behind it and actual funding that if it’s a sister site, we’re Eric Roberts and it’s Julia Roberts.

And this site ain’t chopped liver, as we’re currently working on a redesign that will take good care of you for the next few years. To make these two sites really fly, we’ve opened an office in Alpharetta, Georgia. Over the next two months I will be joined by Renn Brown (who you know and love from CHUD, he’s the young), Stephen Murphy (who you know and love from the podcasts and from the one article he did that one time, he’s the old), Andrea Rothe (who you know and love from her Gash Wednesday blog, she’s the new), and a few great part-timers. Here we will plan, plot, make videos, and bust our ass for you in hopes of taking this site to a new and delightful level. We’ll even have coffee meetings here, show a few movies for a tiny group of folks on our little projector, have a few HALO matches with the system linked systems here.

You are welcome to send us boxes of Red Vines, movie posters, gold bullion, flowers, or a postcard from your town (I plan to build a showcase of Chewer Postcards), or Clash of the Titans figures to our new home:

CHUD.com
c/o Nick Nunziata
12600 Deerfield Parkway
Suite 100
Alpharetta, GA 30004

We’re energized. We’re getting very organized. We’re getting ferocious and sensual. All for you. Enjoy!

Oh, welcome to the new Steady Leak.

Who Dat? #1

Guess
Right Here.

Midnight is the Garden of Good

Earlier this year I whined and bitched about a botched midnight screening of the piss poor movie Legion. In retrospect I may have gotten a little too hot under the collar but it led to change within the company I was complaining about so that’s good. But ultimately what I keep coming back to is this:

Midnight Movies are essential. You look at how our days are (at least mine), they’re packed to the gills with obligations and chores and responsibilities and that’s before you factor in grooming, transportation, eating, shitting, and simply zoning out to clear your mind. It’s hard to fit movie showtimes into that spectrum and since most movies open on a Friday there’s the task of making the room even during weekend time.

Midnight movies solve a lot of those problems, even though there’s a hit that one has to take in their sleep cycle. Then again, a lot of the people I know who talk about how busy they are and how they need to get home early are the same ones who mindlessly watch TV late into the night or are able to put in 100 hours into a video game. Sleep is important but pulling into the driveway at 2am now and then isn’t going to kill anyone.

UNLESS THE DRIVEWAY IS EXPLODING!

Midnight movies are blissful, even if they’re dogshit. Lately, they’ve also allowed us to review films we may not have been able to on time. This coming Thursday at midnight I’m seeing The American so CHUD readers can have a timely review (I found out about the screening eleven minutes after it started). I know they’re hard to justify in the corporate world during this time of the season with films that aren’t tentpoles. Employees are grumpy. The crowds are unpredictable. There are a lot of reasons not to do them, but keeping alive one of the great things about movies outweighs them all.

Here’s hoping that enough of the big box theaters companies realize their responsibility in this, since there are always things trying to keep us from watching movies in theaters but less and less reasons for us to want to make the effort with the prices, indifferent employees, and lack of policing on annoying theater patrons.

See you at 12:01.

Screw the bad buzz on Tron: Legacy

It’s funny how things change. For over a year there was not an ounce of real thick negativity regarding Disney’s upcoming Tron: Legacy. Two San Diego Comic Cons went by and it was a darling to all. This sneaky juggernaut of awesome and weird.

This past Con, everyone knew it was coming and expected what had happened before simply to be the build-up to some amazing payoff. And there wasn’t some big payoff, though anyone who wasn’t blown away by Flynn’s Arcade and the secret party room behind it is a fool. It was just more stuff.

What folks seem to forget is that the original film is an odd little animal. For the sequel to be some piece of crowd pleasing hokum would betray that. It still may end up being that but the vibe I get from all of the footage I’ve seen is that this movie is odd too. Shinier. Much more expensive. But odd. Eerily so at times.

That doesn’t bother me. It comforts me.

We have a sequel to Tron. And it’s not a slam dunk. And a lot of people are nervous about it. Just like the first one. Just how I like it.

I can’t wait until December.

Give
me
a hand. What’s more depressing, seeing everyone you love eaten by
insects
or watching the nightly news? For me it depends on if the
insects
are arboreal. To save you the heartache, I browsed the US news
section
of CNN for material and all I got was this lousy column. Here’s a quick
rundown…

1. The Headline: ‘Silly Bandz’ could be health danger for kids, family warns (link)

Nick’s
Take: A four year old boy wore so many of those Silly Bands that he cut his little arm. Oh, poor little future Darwin Award winner. Apparently the little rubber-living gentleman just piled them colored rubber bands onto his limb until the ripped away at his tiny flesh thanks to physics, nature, and the blindness of parents. Our human forms need to be free, miniature sir! Don’t cut off the blood flow or cause trauma to your bitsy skins! Something tells me this boy is somehow the latest in a long string of natural selection-types. Maybe he’s a 70’s Battlestar:Galactica choking victim or Jarts head wound reincarnated. Imagine dying because of Silly Bands.

2. The Headline: Rocklin “I heart boobies” bracelet controversy leads to boy’s suspension (link)

Nick’s
Take: Imagine the kind of individual that would be offended by the word ‘Boobies’. Imagine what kind of stuffed animals they must have all over their bed. A little boy was reprimanded hard because he was wearing a breast cancer bracelet. While I am the first to say that bracelets on your wrist or ribbons on your car are dumber than a Sidaris film, to each their own. While I am sure he wasn’t wearing the band as a tribute to his breastkilled grandmother (as he says in the article he was) and that he was a 15 year old boy thrilled to have something titty on his arm, it’s such a non-issue that it sucks that this is how administrators use their time. Everyone should wear ‘Boobies’ bracelets, if nothing else as a reminder of why we work hard. Imagine if the bracelet had said ‘Man Ass’. He’d have been executed.

3. The Headline: Rare whale flown to treatment facility dies (link)

Nick’s
Take: A feel good story about a whale rescue became a feel bad story about a whale’s long, prolonged, dry death.

4. The Headline: 2 Pit Bulls Killed Puppy (link)

Nick’s
Take: The most defensive and loyal group of pet owners on Earth are Pit Bull owners. I don’t have much personally against Pit Bulls, other than the fact they look like they hate the living and are channeling the irritated ghosts of Anton LeVay and Don Ameche. The owners of Pit Bulls hate that the animals have a bad rap simply because they maul, kill, and dismember people and other animals all the time everywhere. You’ll hear of owners talking about how loving and docile their Pit Bull is, and it’s heartwarming. Then you’ll hear about a Pit Bull who learned the art of locksmithery just so it could break into an orphanage and eat the daylights out of an Armenian kid. Today’s story features a subtle pair of Pit Bulls who weren’t doing anyone any harm while riding in their owner’s car, the wind flapping their ears all cute and their drool streaking down the master’s trunk. Not a care in the world. Until they jumped out of a moving car to taste and eviscerate a Jack Terrier puppy named Pebbles while the horrified owner tried to hold it away from them. They jumped out of a moving car and then wrenched a squealing delight from a human being and then killed it six or seven times while the owner shrieked like a little girl.

But seriously, Pit Bulls have a bad rap. We should just drop nine or ten Pit Bulls into Afghanistan. Six weeks go by and all of a sudden there’s like six Dave and Busters, a few IHOP’s there, and not one terrorist. Just smiles and dogshit.

5. The Headline: 6 trapped in rip currents off Salisbury (link)

Nick’s
Take: A rip current’s job is to find you and drag you out into the depths where you grow tired, drown, and then are dragged away by sea-beings to Neptune’s den where he fucks you to pieces. That’s a best case scenario. Looks like a rip current is earning its wage.

Who Dat? #2

Hint: I’m sure by now he’s collected.
Last Installment Answer: Anna Chlumsky!

Guess Right Here.

I Hope They Invent 8-D

Can you imagine how much whining and bitching there would be by people who are supposedly film lovers?

“I just saw Labyrinth 8-D and it was so gratuitous when the minotaur jumped into my lap and slapped my face. I could smell its breath and it knew my name and called me by it before reaching into my popcorn and eating it. It was so real. But it was dark. FUCK THIS MOVIE!”

Who Dat? #3

Hint: Enjoys a frank now and then.
Last
Installment Answer: Dana Barron!

Guess Right Here.

REVIEWING YOUR TWIT!

Here I’m going to give my two cents on a few Twitter feeds, some celebrity and some not:

http://twitter.com/TheSlyStallone: I don’t know. I am huge fan of Stallone, but of the very few people follows, Bill O’Reilly is included. Is that a know your enemy thing or is Sly the recipient of one too many of Clubber Lang’s clubberlangs? Also, so far the tweets have echoed some of his work. Heart on sleeve. Motivational but clunky. But consistent with the star. A few tweets:

the hardest part of making action films is attempting to inject heart and soul.. bullets are easy , emotions are hard. LIKE LIFE ITSELF.

I eat healthy monday to friday ..pig out on the weekend ,gain pounds,than lose it again monday to friday .no need to starve, or suffer!!!

If you not breaking things get a skirt and take up ballroom dancing …you men get it. we break things or get broken.

(out of a possible 4 Jims)

http://twitter.com/pennjillette: A smart, opinionated guy. His tweets tend to be smart and opinionated. He also responds to a lot of fan questions, which is nice. He’s a class act and his tweets enhance that. Funny anecdote, we were at the same hotel in San Diego. I was sitting and eating on the Saturday near the end of the con and watched him sit down with some folks near me. A few seconds later I went on Twitter and saw that he’d just tweeted about it. I wanted to reply and tell him I was watching him and to watch himself. A few tweets:

The book will be out Father’s Day 2011 and it’s now called, “god, No! Signs You May Already be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales.”

Going to have a big hairy Vegas steak with Chris Kenner who I would call Copperfield’s Director of Covert Activities, and his groovy wife.

35 years ago today, Teller and I did our first show together at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. We drove out together but worked solo.

Today’s
CHUD Fact

Even God makes fun of Kirk Cameron.

If CHUD.com Ran the Movies