Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep

Scifipedia is off to a pretty good start.

Their SciFi Original Movies season, not so much. The best thing I can say about Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep was that they called it Kraken instead of Killimari. I was only half-watching it, and I was still bored.

SciFi had a contest to name the film and I thought Killimari was an absolutely awesome name for a giant killer squid movie. “Kraken: tentacles of the deep” is also clever and appropriate for a giant squid B movie of the deep, but Killimari was, just, well, Killimari. Just say it out loud a few times. Perfect, no?

Alas, as it turned out, Kraken was a bad movie and thus undeserving of such a cool name. Kraken was just bad, but not Bad. Not endlessly rewatchably Bad. Certainly not “Gratuitous Linda Blair tapdancing sequence” Bad or “James Earl Jones yakking up a leopard” Bad or “Chuck Norris kickboxing the devil in Israel” Bad or even “Bela Lugosi wrestling a giant rubber octopus stolen from the prop room of a John Wayne movie” Bad. It was simply small-b bad. Drowning in mediocrity bad. Boring bad.

To make it worse, they followed it with Snakehead Terror which stars the unholy tryptich of Bruce Boxleitner, Carol Alt, and animatronic stairclimbing snakehead fish. Snakehead Terror is no Empire of the Ants, but it’s lightyears more entertaining than Kraken. B-movies can, and probably should, be many things: badly directed, badly edited, badly acted, even badly written (maybe, especially, badly written) but they should never be boring.

artomatic 2006 organizing

My new project is close to launching, but in the meantime I thought I’d post something new here.

Artomatic 2006 organizing has begun and you can go to the website to find out how to get involved. Not sure where you fit in? Send an email to volunteer at artomatic.org and I’ll help you find the committee that will fill the void in your life you probably didn’t even know you had.

McDonald’s Line Dance?

I’m not sure which is worse: That the thought, “McDonald’s once got Debbie Allen to create a dance for them!” would pop into my head. Or, that it’s true.

Weird.

Nevertheless…according to www.mcspotlight.org, a McDonald’s watchdog site, in 1996 McDonald’s sent this press release out to San Diego newspapers:

Dear (Newspaper editor):

On Sept 26, McDonald’s will make an important announcement that just may have adults across America singing and dancing and we would like you to be among the first to know why.

What, you ask, could McDonald’s say that will make you sing and dance? The answer is the nationwide simultaneous launch of 3 new “Deluxe” sandwiches – all of which, along with the recently introduced Arch Deluxe – comprise McDonald’s new Deluxe Menu.

Imagine larger, tastier, deluxe versions of McDonald’s flagship products – the McChicken, Grilled Chicken, and Fillet-o-Fish sandwiches.

Not singing and dancing yet? You will. Be the first to see the hot, new dance craze soon to hit the streets, clubs and parties of America – the Deluxe Line Dance.

It’s not the Macarena or the Electric Slide. It’s McDonald’s own contemporary fandango, created by world renowned choreographer Debbie Allen (from the movie Fame), to get people grooving to the new Deluxe line Menu at McDonald’s.

The Deluxe Line Dance will be performed by a chorus of San Diego Charger Girls, Mesa College Dancers, and of course Ronald McDonald to a new “living” jingle as memorable as the famed “Two all beef patties, special…” I bet you can finish the rest (Don’t look now but you’re probably singing)

Well that must have been a special, special day.

If you want to learn the Arch Deluxe Line Dance from a specially selected McDonald’s trained and approved instructor, this guy is your man.

More frightening still, this is not the first time I’ve blogged about this.

Galactica 1980 post part 5; I only wish the 6th episode starred Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce

Wet Hot American Summer is a highly under-rated Janeane Garofalo movie about the last day of summer camp.

Toward the end of the film the motley assortment of awkward campers prepare for the requisite softball championship scene. The dialogue goes like this:

Counselor:
So I say, when those anonymously evil campers from Camp Tigerclaw get here we give it our best shot and we try to come from behind at the last minute with some kooky trick play that we made up and we win the game! What do you say, campers?

The campers are skeptical.

Girl Camper:
It sounds like pretty well-worn territory.

Boy Camper:
The whole thing feels kind of trite. I say we forget it.


All of the campers agree.A bus arrives.The Counselor goes to the bus and confers with the counselor from Camp Tigerclaw, and then the Camp Tigerclaw bus pulls away.

Alas, “Spaceball”, Galactica 1980 epsiode 6, trods upon that well-worn baseball/softball game territory, and it hurts every bit as much as you’d expect. It’s funny, but not in the way they intended. If I think too much about it today my head might actually explode, and we can’t have that.

In closing, avoid Galactica 1980 and rent Wet Hot American Summer. It’s much, much better. The official website is even still active. It has a good cast. It’s relatively short. It’s dumb, but it’s fairly clever in it’s dumbness.

And most importantly, it actually means to be funny.