Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland was out last week, and everyone is ranting and raving about how visually spectacular it is, and how Burton's quirky sense of wonder is such a great match for the nonsensical world of Alice - even if it is an "interpretation", as Alice goes back age 19, and not just a straight up adaptation. Nothing wrong with that, but, it strikes me as too easy, where's the challenge, huh? Subversive? Pah! A director making a film within their - and our - comfort zone isn't as great an achievement as a completely inappropriate director making a movie about a subject and genre they are completely ill-suited to. So with that in mind, here's a list of inappropriate movie directors and the kids' movies they could direct, if the Hollywood studios - and producers - had the balls and/or inclination - and didn't mind losing a few million. Hey, I'd download them.
Think, you'd never have to sit through a lukewarm Harry Potter/Twilight adaptation ever again. So, using the themes and styles associated with these auteurs, let's suspend our disbelief, for just a few moments more.
Quentin Tarantino
Directing Harry Potter and the Muthaf#cking Shotgun, Muthaf#cker. Harry Potter is a hitman who has just come back from travelling the hash bars of Amsterdam. He is sent to recover a mysterious briefcase that mob kingpin Dumbledore had stolen while out kung-fu fighting with a bunch of bank robbing Nazi Death Eaters. The inevitable scene where Harry cuts off Voldemort's ear with a sharpened broomstick before pumping him full of hot lead while quoting Philip Pullman is bound to have you on the edge of your seat. The film opens with a café scene in which Harry and Hermione get in a heated debate about the cultural relevance of fridge magnets and the etiquette of tipping strippers.
David Lynch
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squealquel. Alvin, Simon and Theodore are driving home from a gig along Mulholland Drive when their cars hits a strange-looking midget in the middle of the road and they crash into a tree. Alvin awakes in an industrial hospital without his friends, he panics and flees and arrives home to find his girlfriend has given birth to a deformed baby otter. The next morning he receives a mysterious package containing a videotape of his house. That night he attends a party where he sees the strange-looking midget with Simon and Theodore all lip-syncing a performance of Roy Orbison's "In Dreams". This sends Alvin into a rage where he violently attacks the strange-looking midget. Simon and Theodore pull him off, but don't know who he is. Alvin goes insane with despair. The film ends with a shot of Alvin heading off into the horizon on a lawn-tractor before the screen is bathed in white light and white noise builds to a crescendo.
Martin Scorsese
Directing the new Pokémon movie. Robert De Niro is Snorlax, f#cking owning in that movie. The movie starts with a fat, bloated older Snorlax practicing his stand-up routine before we flashback to him in the boxing ring as a middleweight where he's pummelling ten tons of sh#t out of Pikachu. Snorlax has an insufferable rage and is constantly beating his brother, Joe Pesci, who he suspects of "f#cking his wife". Eventually Catholic guilt over his violent temper begins to suffocate Snorlax, his career implodes, and he gets in trouble with the Las Vegas mafia while trying to rip off a casino. Pikachu's head gets crushed in a vice as the mafia try to extract information, Snorlax blames himself. He ends his life getting viciously beaten before being buried alive with his brother, Joe Pesci, in the deserts of Nevada, while mumbling to himself that he is "not an animal".
Michael Haneke
To direct Night at the Museum 3: Alienation in Paris. Ben Stiller gets locked in the Louvre, where the Venus de Milo comes to life as an armless goddess. They are besieged by the headless winged Victory statue and the Egyptian antiquities. Ben Stiller's life has failed him and his past atrocities in the Algerian War come back to haunt him as the museum pieces struggle to fight for their independence. The film is bleak, disturbing and confrontational - all seen through the eyes of a mysterious handheld camera, the operator of which we never see. Ben Stiller's guilt becomes overwhelming and the film ends with a mass-suicide pact between him and the museum pieces, but not before they smash the place up and burn it in a giant bonfire.
Lars Von Trier
Directing a new Care Bears movie, shot using the rules of Dogme 95 featuring Genital Mutilation Bear and F#cktard Bear. The Care Bear kingdom, Care-a-Lot, is under threat from the mafia as the Care Bears are sheltering a blind Icelandic oil rig worker - who is on the run from them - in return for their help he undertakes physical labour. While there he strikes up a romance with Tenderheart Bear but is then paralysed by a falling cloud after a Cloud Quake. Mentally affected by the accident he asks Tenderheart Bear to have sex with other Care Bears and tell him the details. The film ends with the mafia descending on Care-a-Lot. The Care Bears fight them off with a weapon called the Rainbow Rescue Beam. The mafia relent and go into partnership with the Care Bears.
George A. Romero
Percy Jackson of the Dead, set in a mall where Percy's out shopping in American Apparel with his ma for some new jeans. Suddenly they're overrun with grey-faced, dribbling zombies charging them like they were an all-you-can-eat human buffet. It's a searing social critique on those f#cking zombies who ruin your shopping on a Saturday afternoon. Percy Jackson is bitten but then rises to the occasion as his undead form, turning on the race he loved so much and eating the eyeballs of his family as his entire being is overtaken by an unholy macabre desire for the flesh of humanity.
Uwe Boll
A new Disney movie filmed using the stolen lunch money from a day's production on Toy Story 3. Uwe adapts the video-game Theme Park, exploring the day-to-day running of such a place, how to merchandise it etc. Because the budget is so low the whole thing is constructed with badly made plasticine models that are just lumps of clay covered in pubic hair. The film is all shot in Uwe Boll's garden and ends with a terrifying crash on a Fisher Price roller coaster where all the plasticine lumps form one giant lump covered in pubes, grass and hairballs, which then explodes. The explosion is really just a match being lit.
Takashi Miike
Hannah Montana: Sh#t Just Got Real, where Hannah Montana moves from Tennessee to Tokyo and starts working with the yakuza. She turns into a torturer using piano-wire to slice off the testicles of an undercover journalist who works for a celeb magazine and is trying to get a story on her, and sticks needles in his eyes. She also hangs any rivals up by their own veins while pouring boiling oil on them. The musical numbers include songs about being a school dropout and the attractions of violence. The film ends with Hannah and a horde of claymation zombies singing her theme song The Best of Both Worlds.
Todd Solondz
Making High School Musical 4, a film full of cruel kids who barf down themselves and predatory teachers from the darkest recesses of cyberspace, singing songs about existential anxiety, depression and teen-suicide. One song is just a chorus of children crying profusely. It comes to a nail-biting finale in the school gym where two underdogs - a boy and a girl - win a dance competition and all the children are about to celebrate their win when they realise they are incapable of emotion, so instead stare awkwardly at each other before a teacher ejaculates into a gym sock.
David Cronenberg
Directing the new Twilight movie where organ-eating parasites invade the vampires' bodies. Jeff Goldblum plays a scientist with telekinetic abilities who invents a teleportation machine. He tries to teleport Edward and Bella but fails and they begin to mutate into each other. To save them from this terrible fate he makes their conjoined-head explode. In the meantime the deadly parasite is eating away at the other vampires making them die a slow agonising death, as their pale-glittery bodies begin to vanish. Eventually turning them into dust where they are then snorted by Teen Wolf out on a Friday night bender - he then disappears into the Interzone to car surf to the song Surfin' USA, and the credits roll.
yeesh kevin holmes, this was awful. all that text for a one trick pony joke of juxtaposition? i can tell you were reaching and hoping no one would notice. didja forget and almost miss a deadline so you just had to come up with something? you shoulda stuck with the first paragraph and went from there. this reads like a mad lib. 'just swap out a cliche tarantino-esque word in harry potter setting!' hilarity will ensue! *ya-fucking-wn*
Added: 1 day ago by dings
Danger, Danger!
Recently I've started watching Breaking Bad (I know I'm late to it- shame on me) starring Bryan Cranston (Malcolm in the Middle's dad) about a meek chemistry teacher who gets diagnosed with lung cancer and told he's only got two years to live. In order to provide for his family's future he starts to produce crystal meth to sell on the streets. His life goes from suburban father and downtrodden teacher - working in a car wash to earn extra cash with a boss who is as annoying as his eyebrows are thick - to a man who has to deal with dissolving bodies in acid and kidnapping and killing local drug dealers. It's a great show, darkly humorous with Bryan Cranston putting in a steady performance of weary stoicism while battling his way through an underground, unbeknown world.
But it got me thinking; what occupation would I do if I just didn't care whether I lived or died? If I wasn't the sort of man who looks at the Cowardly Lion as a role model for bravery? The sort of jobs where danger means more than checking out some NSFW content in your lunch break, where danger constantly looks over your shoulder - like a boss - pointing out how you could so easily die..
Criminal Kingpin
Why not? Think Al Pacino in Scar Face, illegal toxic waste dumping, Naples housing estates and Marvel Supervillians. You'd certainly make some money, but at what cost? You must either have a conscience made from iced nerve-endings or be terminally haunted by past atrocities committed or sanctioned. Its attraction is the thrill of managing something so constantly about to boil over, that at any moment you could have control wrestled from you in the most violently immediate way possible - like a hunted animal. TV tells me it's glamorous, but this is an obvious lie.
Size of balls = Mercury
Blowout/Oil Firefighting
The task of this job is containing erupting and blazing oil wells - we've all been there. It's the sort of heroic old-school job that demands a John Wayne movie be made about it, which is exactly what happened; the film Hellfighters is about American oil well firefighter "Red" Adair and his daring crew. Men who, no doubt, ate fire for breakfast and who could give a pillar of glaring flames a wedgie and then steal its lunch money.
Size of balls = Saturn
Flying Trapeze Artist
Flying majestically through the air like an eagle catching a lift on the back of a falling angel, to the gasps and cries of the audience far below. One miss and you'll be hurtling toward the ground quicker than you can say, "What's wrong with middle-management?" Plus it means you can actually run away and join the circus, without fear of being trapped cleaning up lion crap forever. Now who doesn't harbour a secret desire to do that?
Size of balls = Mars
Hurricane Hunter
It's all in the job title: "Hurricane Hunter". Not someone who hunts a beast, but someone who hunts a Force of Nature. Good luck with that. Basically these are aircrafts that fly into tropical cyclones for research and observation purposes. Typically they're military squadrons with nerves made from the outer crust of neutron stars, who wouldn't know fear if it crept up behind them and kicked them in the ass. All their mail is addressed to THE EDGE.
Size of balls = Sun
Stunt Performer/Daredevil
Blame Evel Knievel, blame The A-Team, blame those Theme Park Wild West shows and their ramshackle, tumbling gun-fights. But it's got to be cool flying through the air in a Corvette, spinning itself through a flaming wall of doom, before landing on two-wheels and screeching to a halt inches from the Assistant Director's toes.
Size of balls = Neptune
Flying Ace/Fighter Pilot
Oh the glory. These guys (and gals, Russian Lydia Litvyak to name one) are the stuff of legend, charging through the air like swooping dragons. To be considered an "Ace" you need to shoot down 5 planes or more in a single day. If war is hell then Flying Aces are Hell's Angels - and there wasn't a homoerotic volleyball game in sight. These people didn't have time for wingmen -death was their wingman.
Size of balls = Milky Way
Bomb Disposal Expert
Not every career can say they've had an Oscar-nominated Hollywood action-flick (albeit an unconventional one) made about it. Actually, most military careers can probably say that - never mind. It doesn't stop this job from being so dangerous you have to wear a protective suit made from Kevlar, ballistic plates and Katherine Bigelow's unstoppable thirst for a gold statuette. - and that's not just to stop the shit constantly dribbling down your legs, but a suit worn because it might possibly save your life. But not if you're Guy Pearce.
Size of balls = Earth
Smoke Jumper
Sounds so mysterious, like it's from the pages of a Neil Gaiman novel. So what does it actually involve? These are firefighters who are parachuted into a raging inferno to start hacking down trees o head off a forest fire before it gets out of control. So, not only do you have to be able to parachute into a fire without dying, you also have to be able to fell trees without them falling on you, while all around burns a tempestuous campfire with attitude. Every fibre in your body would be telling you to turn and run.
Size of balls = A black hole
Lion Tamer
It has an air of magic about it, the taming of a beast so wild and majestic - what better way to respect it then rid it of every instinct in its body. Plus you could cultivate a handle-bar moustache and you'd be justified in doing so. When people mocked you in the street, and laughed at your two-century's old style, you could pull out a business card featuring a photo of you nestled in a lion's roar. Splendid.
Size of balls = Venus
yeah, that's what i was going to say wit. 5 kills in a day would be **** incredible. 5 aerial victories in a day would be pretty impressive as well.
Added: 3 days ago by havocitz
So two things I've learned in the last week: I need anger management classes, and laptops are shit. Period. (Or more accurately, running Windows on a laptop is shit. Period.) I found both things out the hard way. It was hard for both me and the laptop. But the laptop drove me to it. It left me with no other option but to "UNLEASH HELL!" What happened is nothing that hasn't happened a million times before to millions of people - probably ever since the IBM PC invaded people's homes way back in 1981.
So anyway, what happened? My laptop, which is really just a netbook with a DVD drive and bigger screen, has been slowing down every time I use it. EVERY FUCKING TIME. If I have a browser open, Photoshop, Outlook and a Word doc, forget trying to tab between them without the computer entering some kind of retarded bullet-time, like it's having a stroke. It's painful to watch. What should take twenty minutes takes an hour. Simple tasks take on an epic quality, like crossing a vast wilderness without the proper equipment. I spent most of my time not working but staring hopelessly at my computer screen which was frozen in time, locked in an electronic paralysis, while the world around it drifted onwards. We've all been there - it's infuriating. It's traumatic.
Well this happened for what felt like the millionth time. And by Devastator's giant swinging steel testicles that was the last time this laptop got the better of me. The red mist descended like a furious fog. I was fuming, nothing less than puncturing the very fabric of reality with an anguished wail of despair would give me satisfaction. But that wasn't possible - and believe me I tried. My neighbours can vouch for that. So that was it, things were going to have to get ugly. I was left with no other option. In the red corner was me: 160Ibs, 5ft 10. In the blue corner; my shitty, pathetic excuse for a laptop that is the eMachine D620 (I know, why would anyone buy an eMachine?) - a machine so wanting that if I held a broken electronic tin-opener next to it (or even an iPad), it would feel vastly inferior and secrete something close to electric tears.
Time to die.
Time to bring out the big guns. It brings a keyboard, I bring a fist. *THWACK* *THWACK* and one more for good luck *THWACK* OK then, just one more *THHHH-WACK*. Take that, you evil mechanical bastard! If I could've released a flaming blue orb of concentrated hate I would've done. But hadoukens are not my strong point.
The only witness to this tragic and desperate scene was my cat, who was looking at me from the other side of the table with a disdain it usually reserves for screaming babies and the very young. The look said it all, "What have you become?" After the shame of what I'd done came crashing down on me like a wall of self-reproach I looked at the laptop. There was no cursor on the screen when I moved the mouse-pad, and it was making weird electronic gurgling sounds. What have I done? I thought. Shut it down, shut it down! So I rebooted and, behold, a horrific sight, a sight that paradoxically deep within my mind I secretly relished for all the pain this laptop had caused me; the dreaded, finalistic BSOD. Muthafu - Is there a techie in the house? No. What to do? Call a friend. Purge yourself, tell them what you've done, and face up to the ugly truth. Later I found out that where I'd repeatedly thumped it - the right-side of the touchpad - was where the hard drive was. Holy-shitting-laptop-destroying-Christ. Nice one I thought. Nice. One. When the technological singularity comes, those sentient machines better not find this out.
So the outcome of this act of brutality, this act of wanton destruction, for which I am ashamed but also slightly pleased - I'm going to get a MacBook. Yeah, I said it. iRelent. iSuccumb. They may be expensive but at least they work. Everyone I know who has a laptop, even ones that are powerful, they hate them. Stories of woe, pain, suffering. They moan about them, Sony Vaios, Dells, everything. So I've made my decision. And when I get my MacBook I can take it with me to my anger management classes, to take notes. And to show off.
and idk who you have been talking to that has had those kind of computers crap out on them because i know plenty of people that own the same computers and have had them for like 4 or 5 years and did minor upgrades to them here and there and have never had problems with them. but yeah emachines are the "you get what you paid for" kinds of computers. i know more people that have had problems with emachines and hp's than anything else.
Added: 11 days ago by thrashnburn89
