monkeysvsrobots.com » pop-culture for the people

Hollywood here again. As you may have noticed by reading some of my reviews (arrrgh! sorry, my stupid neighbors are playing loud bass booming music. I hate loud bass booming music. I just want to spit in their eyes and wave my fist at them. I get annoyed easily when it comes to people disturbing my peace. Anyway, back to the story.) ahem… some of my reviews you will see that I’m a man who just doesn’t have time to sit and do something for long periods of time (except work on this site for you worms). Yes, I’m a man who is always on the move. I’ve got no place to go, but I have to keep moving. Okay, so who am I kidding? I don’t leave my bedroom that often because I like my privacy (and I know what you pervs are thinking, no not that kind of privacy) to work on my projects. When I leave my room it is usually to go to work, hangout with friends (Future, Hazzard, Chugner, etc.) or to be with my girlfriend. When I’m not working on this site or doing one of the above I’m watching TV. Now I’m a guy who likes the classics and my TV is usually turned to TCM or AMC. However, when I’m not watching the classics I like to watch Discovery, TLC, Fox (gotta get my Sunday night fix) and catch up on the latest and “greatest” original shows Sci-Fi channel is putting out. Which brings us to the subject of this article: First Wave.

First Wave is a relatively new show put out on the Sci-Fi channel and by first impressions of it, it’s surely a winner. Wave stars a guy named Cade Foster who is apparently some sort of action hero who is prophesied to save the world in the near future. This future is full of aliens called Gua (which I’m sure is short for guano because they look like poo). Gua, we are led to believe are evil because they are aliens and are often portrayed as the devil. Kane supposedly started some group of weirdos (who act like they belong in a compound in Montana) called Raven Nation that is fighting all kinds of “Big Bad Things” that Nostrodomus predicted.

The cast is rounded off with a few other characters who we are prodded into liking. There is some guy named Eddie who looks like the so called hacker guy in true lies. A new character was added a while ago played by Traci Lords, once child (yes, child, as she wasn’t yet over 18) prodigy porn star extraordinaire. Traci, star of such memorable classics as, Hot Cum Orgy, Adventures of Tracy Dick: The Case of the Missing Stiff, Pony Girls I and II, Open Up Traci, Whore Of The Worlds, and who could forget Swedish Erotica 56, 57, and 60? Well I don’t know either, since I have never been one to invest much in the porn industry. However, I find it hilarious the producers of First Wave decided the show needed more of an edge so they brought in an aging porn star to a show on a network obviously directed at geeks and dorks (who else watches sci-fi?).

Anyway, they run around killing the evil aliens because Nostrodomus (A Cleo of days past) predicted some guy named Mabus is going to destroy the world or something. Mabus shows up often to demonstrate the editors button pushing skills (ooh, time warp mode! Neato!!) ala WOW but with a higher budget. I’m not so sure the goon is all that evil (hey, he looks like the dude from Darkman). I think the show would have been made much more interesting if he were played by Mathew Lesko and the future was portrayed as a world of marketing hell. “Hahaha! I can show you ways of making money the government doesn’t want you to know!!” Or better yet, he should be another of Cade’s sidekicks planning and scheming of the next way they can fund their “Raven Nation”. I kind of like the Raven Nation because it only further promotes the idea that dorks are out to save the world (and the meek shall inherit the earth).

So if you like shows that spew a lot of mumbo jumbo about alien devil people taking over the world and dorks defending the ways of right and good this show is for you. Myself, I’d rather watch Lexx. At least it isn’t pretentious and it’s almost funny at times.

Bottom Line: Aging porn stars and alien devils don’t cut it. Watch Lexx or Farscape instead.

-Hollywood
P.S. I’m hoping the Future will do a review of “Black Scorpion”. Hehehe… It just screams of quality TV!!

More Information on First Wave
SciFi Channel’s Official First Wave Site
First Wave: The Predictions (dorky fansite)
Seattle Times Review (they’d like to remind you Coppola is behind this show, so that means quality)
Sci-Fi Hut (another fansite, but of the British flavor)
First Wave Comics (see Traci in comics too!)
First Wave Webring (link to all sorts of dorks!!)
The Brethren Chronicle (The Official Newsletter, cuz they say they are!)

This is Hazzard. I’d like to review a movie that changed my life, and that movie is Escape From L.A.

I know what you dorks are saying, “Hey, that movie was not as good as the original!”

But, must I remind you dorks that certain dweebs and nerds feel that Picard was a better Captain than Kirk. At least Picard didn’t have every simplex of space herpes imaginable. There’s something to be said for sequels. Just think of Rocky II, The Godfather Part II, Goonies II: The Nintendo videogame, all classics of some kind(?). I’m not saying Escape From L.A. is better than Escape From New York. All I’m saying is that the philosophical implications of the sequel will astound you!

First off, if any of you have read Fear and Trembling, then you not only know the name of the guy who wrote it (but you can’t spell it, like me), but you also know about the man’s struggle to rise from aesthetic drives to religious ones. In Escape From L.A., we are exposed to a prison city of dissidents who have no religious goals whatsoever. In fact, they are only concerned with personal wealth and the futile maintenance of beauty. Stay with me, ‘cause this is serious stuff.

The city is filled with genetic rejects and plastic surgery freaks who look like Michael Jackson’s support group. Enter: Snake Plissken, a gun toting, good old American rebel who’s a cross between the Marlboro man and Mad Max.

He’s not about looking beautiful, stylin’ and profilin’ (ala Ric Flair) like these LA bums. He’s transcended that. He’s on a higher level. One might argue that he’s somehow more moral. However, he’s transcended this shortcoming as well.

He shoots people in the head with a big nasty shotgun

That’s not very moral now is it? However, Abraham as Fear and Trembling points out, is ready to
kill his own son for his God. That’s not very nice, either. Still, Abraham has transcended the moral to reach the religious. Therefore, we must consider that this man, Snake Plissken, has also transcended as he becomes the rescuer of the captives in the movie, he also exists as a sort of religious savior.

Don’t believe me? Look at Kurt Russell… Not now, and back then.

Didn’t he look like Jesus? And he plays Elvis in 1979’s aptly titled “Elvis”. Elvis, who has died, yet somehow lives on? Could the philosophical ramifications of Escape From LA have spread throughout his career. No, no, they haven’t, but stick with me, okay? There is more evidence that Snake is meant to depict a sort of Christ figure. Snake’s character in both movies must sacrifice himself to save the very people who persecute him. Sound familiar? Snake saves a young woman from a leftist or rightist or communist (something bad-ist I don’t remember) dictator who looks suspiciously like Saddam Hussein. If you’ve been keeping up on your Weekly World News, you not only know that Bat Boy has escaped again, but you know that Saddam is often called the possible third anti-Christ. For those of you non-religious people (who haven’t read the bible or have seen Escape From New York), the first anti-Christ was probably foreign and mean, the second was probably Hitler, and the third is probably behind that whole Beanie Baby craze. Needless to say, Antichrist’s are bad news like when the price of raisins goes up, only worse. Who can save us? The bible says Jesus and a bunch of angels. All Snake Plissken needs is Steve Buscemi and a lot of guns!!!!

Throughout this movie, we see Snake acting pretty immoral in an effect to save America from the people who embody everything that’s bad about it today. He even gets to play a wicked game of basketball in a do or die sports arena (just like Jesus did in the book of Job). By some miracle, he survives these challenges. In the surfing scene, Jesus/Snake seems to walk on water in a bizarre tidal wave sequence. Like in the first movie, Snake gets some loyal followers. Of course, one of them ends up turning on him. Interesting. This all sounds so familiar. I think this was the plot to an episode of the Golden Girls.

Anyway, this stuff gets really interesting when you see what our savior does in the end. He presses a button that makes this satellite do something very scientific indeed. And suddenly, humanity is sent back to the stone age leaving all technology utterly useless. Is this a prophecy of some sort? Is Snake trying to tell us that in order to be saved we must abandon all our earthly possessions and prepare for the higher kingdom? Is God telling us that there is no cable TV in Heaven? What WILL we do?

Snake rides off into the darkness at the end of this movie lighting his cigarette with a match showing us once and for all that the American version of Jesus kicks a lot more ass than the one they got in that picture bible I borrowed from my kid nephew to do the research for this article. Snake shows us an American ideal that is in contradiction with the media crazed, pop-culture world of today. Snake, religious rebel, American martyr, our role model for the future. Don’t believe me? Rent the movie. Look again. If you don’t see the man’s inhumanity to man, at least you get to see some really cool explosions.

Later
-Hazzard

Shameless Plugs:
Buy Escape from L.A. from Amazon.com
Buy Escape from New York from Amazon.com
Buy Escape from Monkey Island from Amazon.com