This Is Why I Love Premium Movie Channels. (Part I)

Are you worried that you will be spending too much money this summer to enjoy everything you need? Are you concerned that the $8 per ticket to see Iron Man for your action, You Don't Mess With the Zohan for your laughers, your The X-Files: I Want to Believe for crazy sci-fi stuff, your The Dark Knight for your dark exterior city cinematography? Don't want to spend money traveling to the movie theaters, what with rising gas prices, mortgage payments up the wazoo, and those code orange "elevated" terorr alerts? Are you just too tired from working your 40 hour a day job to stay awake during a Midnight movie? Well, you're in luck -- if you subscribe to premium movie channels!

It's been a particularly good week in checking out the random crap that Brigitte and I get on HBO -- here are a few things that we have enjoyed.

Ghost
Brigitte and I watched the first fifteen minutes of this blockbuster movie from 1990 that has been cycling through HBO and Cinemax and realized that we needed to watch the whole thing. So, naturally, we got our favorite campy movie friend Christine over to watch the whole thing with us. Now, let's just say that IMDb's classification of this movie as a "Comedy / Drama / Fantasy / Mystery / Romance / Thriller" is the most accurate genre description I have ever seen. Yes, this movie had elements of all SIX genres. SIX genres!

For laffs, you've got Whoopi Goldberg who, get this, is a TOTALLY sassy psychic who happens to befriend ghost Patrick Swayze because he, um, randomly decided to walk into the "Spiritual Guidance" store (why? Because he's a spirit too? I wasn't totally clear about his motivations.) Their relationship is hilarious, especially when Patrick Swayze tortures Whoopi into visiting Demi Moore by singing "I Am Henry The Eighth" in some kind accent that sounded like a robot trying to sound like a British dude (and although the filmmakers were definitely going for the intentional laff factory there, they got a lot of the unintentional laffers, too.) Seguing into the romance category, we learn that Patrick Swayze, while alive, sang that song to convince Demi Moore to go on their first date. Yes, nothing says "love" more than "I won't stop singing a song into your ear loudly and obnoxiously until you agree to go on a date with me."

And of course, there is the now famous pottery lovin' scene, which is even more weird now knowing that this movie was directed by Jerry Zucker, who is also one of the writers of the Naked Gun series, which lampooned the scene in Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult. But wait, there's action too! When Patrick Swayze enters into the ghost world, he realizes that there are some ghosts who want to do bad things to other ghosts, and people, too! Naturally, this gives Mr. Swayze time to appeal to the dudes going to the movie with their girlfriends by totally fighting them. If only ghost Keanu Reeves made an appearance, it could have also served as a great sequel to Point Break.

And when we weren't being either thrilled by action, laffed up by Whoopi Goldberg, romanced by ghost Swayze and might-as-well-have-been-a-ghost-cuz-her-acting-sucked-so-bad Demi Moore, we were swept away into a mystery story involving a poor guy whose motivations were not yet totally known to us, and Swayze's former co-worker who seemed to be just boring enough to be actually evil (although, as Brigitte pointed out, his evil eyes kind of give it away, too.)

Throw in those elements of fantasy and thriller that naturally come out of a Comedy / Drama / Romance / Mystery about ghosts, and you've got the only true one-size-fits-all blockbuster movie. Oh how beautiful it is.

The Wire, Season Five
The Mpls staff of the Blogulator finally finished up The Wire DVDs and have finally gotten to season five, which aired from January to March this year and has been precariously saved on our DVR, and thankfully protected from automatic deletion (don't worry, Brigitte's 50+ reruns of Frasier are usually the first to get deleted when it fills up!) No spoilers here about anything, other than the fact that the fifth season is like eating an amazing dessert that I don't want to end, after a delicious appetizer (season one) and the best meal ever (seasons two, three and four.) Brigitte and Amy plan to be the most offensive Halloween costumes ever, dressing as Bubbles and Proposition Joe. I, however, plan to dress as Walon, Bubbles' sponsor, played by Steve Earle. I'll say something like "Bubs, man, you gotta let go of your guilt" and then walk away on the street for some creepy reason.

On a side note, discussion point! What season has the best theme song? My money goes for season four's, performed by members of the Baltimore Boys Choir -- it's got that funky hip-hop vibe that seems to capture the heart of season four better than any theme song captures any other season's essence. A close second, though, has got to be season five's version by Mr. Earle himself.

True Blood and its creepy viral marketing campaign

On paper, a new dramedy vampire television series based on the Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris and adapted for television by Alan Ball (American Beauty, Six Feet Under, the upcoming Towelhead) and starring Anna Paquin, sounds like a TOTAL TRAIN WRECK! But now I've been seeing fairly positive buzz about it, and now that there's a street date for the premiere on HBO (September 7, 2008) I'm getting positively psyched.

And now I find out that HBO (or maybe real vampires?) have started a viral marketing campaign for the show. Bloodcopy.com has numerous YouTube videos from "real" "vampires" as well as some secret language that I guess means something in the series. Just peeking through what is on this, erm, blog, has gotten me a little creeped out. I don't want vampires to jump out of my laptop, much less find out my IP address, so I'm going to avoid looking at it too much. But HBO, consider me perfectly buzzed for your first new drama of the fall season. I'm looking forward to it.

Coming soon on "This Is Why I Love Premium Movie Channels" -- a write-up at some point during the airing of the new HBO miniseries Generation Kill, written by The Wire's David Simon and Ed "No, Not That Ed Burns, Thank God" Burns.

This entry was posted by Unknown, on Sunday, June 08, 2008. You can leave your response.