Sydney Greenstreet, right after he ate Humphrey Bogart
First: So it took Lil Wayne to get arrested for having too man Flinstones vitamins to find out that he's 26, not 20 or whatever the myth was. This makes sense, because he has kids and I'm just not sure its humanly possible to have procreated and taken the throne at the South's biggest rap label before acquiring the right to legally order 17 bottles of Cris for for his ho-biting pekonese. Anyway, now I can say I've been listening to him since he was 20, while in reality it was six months ago, when Dwayne did collabo with a Seaver.
Second: DVD Game on:
Brick (2006), Rian Johnson) One of Slothra's favoritos of 2006, even though it should not be good at all--which, of course, makes it better. It stars Joseph Hyphenated-Lastname, the kid from "Third Rock from the Sun" and the Taming of the Shrew remake, Ten Things I Hate About You, which, if you remember, also starred Julia Styles' globe-shaped face and Heathcliff Gaychaps, who little Joey actually resembles in this one. Brick is a homage to Dashell Hammett-style hardboiled cigar chomping, always raining, "see here buster," tricky dame Bogart noir--and a very sincere homage at that. Even setting the movie in present day, where there's nary a Fedora, Bowler, or Stetson to be found outside a Brian Setzer Sporkestra show, is balls from the window to the wall. This guy takes it to the next level, though, and and sets it in goddamn High School. Genre mashing of this sort so easily end up in gimmick land, but ultimately, the movie doesn't give a fuck that the characters are in high school. Johnson uses the skater terrain of California High Schools well, but we never see the kids in school, ands besides one fairly hilarious scene, where one gangster kid's mom offers our hero apple juice while her son, "the pin," (played by dumbo-eared lukas haas) nibbles at a cookie laid out on a napkin, 'rents are nowhere to be found.
Ultimately Brick's driven by the dialogue, which sounds like its written by a cross between Ghostface and Elmore Leonard, and a well constructed plot with more chicanery and backdoor exits than the Nixon Administration. The talk is some of the densest patois this side of Miller's Crossing. Indeed, the director admitted the Coens' own twisty-plot faux-noir as an influence. But while the Coens mostly just wanted to dress up Gabriel Byrne in finely tailored suits and have him say stuff like "take your flunky and dangle"--all with half a tongue in their cheek, Brick ain't joking around much. Like Miller's, the movie makes up its own slang, and the characters spit that shit with abandon. "Nah that's upper crust, Dode's pie pan grease" says the Brain, the coke-bottle-spectacled, rubix cube-fiddling consigliere to Brandon (the protagonist). I had to watch it three times to understand half of what's said. For instance: "No, bulls would gum it. They'd flash their dusty standards at the wide-eyes and probably find some yegg to pin, probably even the right one." Apparently a 'yegg' is someone who burgles burglars, in case you were wondering. Rating: James Monroe
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