March and April 2009 - DE Expressions

Some have complained I wasn't answering enough messages in my DE Expressions columns. Though I still won’t display your e-mail unless you tell me it's okay to print, I’ve decided to address every comment added to my boards here at the DE website and over at AskMen.com.

As you already know, AskMen.com accepts no responsibility for the content of its message boards. As such, the posts are considered public domain. Also note that AskMen.com is not accountable for my inane responses, so stop breaking Hugh Jackman's heart by downloading X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Let's start with the AskMen.com board for Escape from New York.

And you forgot the ultimate appeal of the movie when I caught the movie on HBO as a prepubescent boy: Adrienne Barbeau had one of the best racks in the game. How could you forget this? When I saw that rack, I knew I was not gay. I loved when she was shooting the .357 at the end and her bosom was bouncing away after the discharge. Classic.

The Man from N.A.V.Y.

To tell you the truth, her outrageous eighties hair distracted me from her cleavage. Also, I like show tunes.

Issac Hayes as the Duke of New York was great casting. The chandeliers on the hood of his Cadillac were priceless!

Gumbosin

For everything else, there's MasterCard.

Snake Plissken Rules because he is bad and good.

Mauricio M.

He’s also a true-blue anarchist, a rarity in Hollywood movies, which tend to confuse the philosophy with psychotic nihilism. Snake is a relatively reasonable man who genuinely believes the world would be better off without governments, and the irony of the character is that he’d probably be happier as a New York City inmate.

Dude, this guy should act as Solid Snake if people begin to make Metal Gear Solid live action. It’s going to be badass.

41 Ace

Given the recent Hollywood trend of having infants play every lead role, I doubt any producer would cast a sixty-year-old Kurt Russel as Solid Snake, so I think it’d be kind of creepy if he were to start acting as a video game character. Besides, how would that work exactly? Would Russel leap around and run in circles whenever I pressed on my d-pad?

This next one is in response to my review of Transporter 3 over at AskMen.com. I usually proofread your messages before copying them to this website, but I was afraid the comment would lose most of its charm if I did that here.

This sequal failed to the the first too!

Bob

I actually like Transporter 3 more than the second one, which is to say I dislike it slightly less. I’m going to leave it at that for fear of misinterpreting your intriguing statement or taking the mystery out of it.

The following two comments refer to my April Fool's piece, Twenty-Five Unhelpful Things about Dimitri.

So, what's your tactic? This is really clever and fun, which just means people are gonna be tagging you on chain e-mails left and right from now on!

Kim

My hope was to persuade people from across the globe to turn the self-centered exercise into a comedic chain of absurdity with recipients constantly trying to top one another in both showmanship and humour. If the next message is any indication, I may have been on the right track:

I tried to do that on my own, but the only one that was pretty good that I found was the line from The Bourne Identity when he describes what he can do.

Nicolas

I assume you’re referring to the scene in which Bourne asks Marie, "I can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside. I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting up at the counter weighs two hundred fifteen pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of the gray truck outside, and at this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Now why would I know that?" Using that speech in your list is a great idea, Nicolas, and I hope you haven’t given up trying to find more funny bits.

Now here's a concise reaction to my review of The Day the Earth Stoo Still.

Nino likes this.

Nino

Dimitri appreciates that.

All right, let's get back to the AskMen.com boards with five comments on my review of Sin City, the first of which is apperently very angry.

Isn't this review three years too late? Why pick something that came out years ago and everyone's already seen anyway. What's next, a book review of The DaVinci Code?

Johnny K.

I’m not sure what you expect from a video pick, Johnny. Incidentally, if I were to make literary picks for AskMen.com or any other periodical, I certainly wouldn’t be reviewing The Da Vinci Code. Take that, Dan Brown!

How can users have rating this so low?

Stephen

This is another comment I couldn't bring myself to correct, but, to answer your question, Stephen, my guess is readers feel the film is no longer worth recommending because it's three years old and everyone's seen it anyway.

It gets better every time I see it.

Roman

Imagine how good it would get if you sat down and watched it over and over again for three years straight. Incidentally, The Da Vinci Code sucks no matter how often you read it. Oh, snap!

I really don't see what people don't like about this movie. Robert Rodriguez has made a brilliant film adaption of a brilliant Frank Miller graphic novel. Plus, they just happened to cast the HOTTEST actress in the world in one of the lead roles.

Alba Fan

Whom do you mean, Alba Fan? Jaime King? Carla Gugino? Elijah Wood? To be fair, I don’t think the engimatic Kevin constitutes a leading role.

Sin City probably beats out Batman as the best comic-book-to-film adaption.

That Guy

I tend to agree, but then I never cared for Tim Burton’s Batman (1989). I always felt the Prince music videos were more interesting: "Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! I want to bust that body! Batdance!"

Our next two messages are from Diorissimo, a long-time reader of the DE website. The first one is in regards to the Thought of the Month for April 2009, which poked fun at my dismal financial situation.

Yeah! Quite simple. Just write 0 everywhere. Done!

Diorissimo

Sadly, that's pretty much what I did, Diorissimo.

Urgh. Let's move on to your second comment, which discusses my review of A Tale of Two Sisters.

I've seen this movie. It's well done, efficently scary, not morbid like Ringu. Very sad story though.

Diorissimo

You're right. A Tale of Two Sisters is incredibly depressing, isn't it? My heart aches just thinking about it. Huh. Well, that did little to cheer me up.

I guess that's it for this ridiculously long edition of DE Expressions. Until next time, keep busting. If a man is considered guilty for what goes on in his mind, then give me the electric chair for all my future crimes. Batdance!

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