TWO ASSES AND SOME SUPERHEROES: THE TALL DUDE REVIEWS “THE AVENGERS”

The two best characters in the film.

The dozen or so of you who maybe read my review for “Snow White and The Huntsman” may have noticed that The Tall Dude’s Rules for a good movie, which I went over in my “Prometheus” review. These are, in brief, Samuel L. Jackson, theater leg room, and nudity. I am happy to report that I watched “The Avengers” quite comfortably with plenty of leg room and had Jules Winfield in abundance. So it all comes down to the last condition, and, I’m sad to say, it disappointed.

This is a movie where, much like “Prometheus”, I would have liked to see some nudity. Similarly to that Monster Penis Extravaganza, you certainly had a cast that I, nay the world, nay GOD HIMSELF would want to see with their pants off.

The always stunning Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow, the least convincing Russian ever, Cobie Smulders a.k.a  Robin from HIMYM, who plays Nice Ass #2…I’m sorry, Agent Maria Hill. And even some of the male actors had the rippling muscles or at the very least the rugged handsomeness that you would think would be rendered even more handsome and rugged in the buff. You know, for art’s sake.

It’s not like Writer/Director/Producer Joss Whedon tries to shy away from the sex appeal. All of the female’s outfits are skin-tight, and quite a few shots highlight the hindparts. The first time we see Black Widow she’s dressed in what I don’t believe is standard S.H.I.E.L.D-apparel. Plus I was pretty sure Iron Man had adamantium nipples on his suit, and the Hulk’s bulge was so big you’d think he was wearing a codpiece.

But alas, there was no nakedness. Sad face. However, the movie was just so good that this once I will forgo by usual full star demerit and just imagine Stellen Skarsgard half-naked.

I have to admit that I was a little peeved at the movie starting out for making me sit through the first two Hulk movies before I saw this one. There were no less than six movies that fed into this over the past decade or so, although if you want to get technical only five made references to an eventual Avengers film. And while the two Iron Mans, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger were actually good, the two Hulks were bowls of extra large gamma irradiated dog piss and DO NOT NEED TO BE SEEN TO PREPARE FOR THIS MOVIE. You could probably go without seeing the two Iron Mans as well, although you’d be missing out on two good ones. Captain America and Thor, on the other hand, need to be watched or you won’t know jack about some of the primary elements in “The Avengers”.

In fact, Whedon seems to take the best parts of all of those films and add enough fresh elements to make it unique and fun. This includes the villain, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, who pleasantly transforms from the vengeful and bitchy little brother in Thor to superpowered commander of an extraterrestrial invasion force who’s having a gay old time doing so, playing the Norse God of mischief with the joyful abandon the character demands.

And thank God they picked Loki to be the antagonist in this thing, as all the other villains from all the other movies were kind of stupid, with the exception of the always-brilliant Hugo Weaving as Red Skull in Captain America, and considering he got SPOILER ALERT vaporized by the cosmic muffin cube, there was a slim chance we were going to see him anyway.

Thankfully Loki isn’t the only character perfectly casted and played, every protagonist was too. Robert Downey Jr. plays Tony Stark as a smug, uber-rich, arrogant bastard. Mark Ruffalo plays Bruce Banner/Hulk as a living powder keg who hates his life. Chris Hemsworth plays The Huntsman…oops, Thor who seems to be enjoying what fools these mortals be while impatiently waiting for another chance to smack something with his big-ass hammer, particularly his little brother. Even Samuel L. Jackson basically steals the screen whenever he shows up, playing the same character he has played so well in most of his movies, although I would have liked to hear him say “DOES HE LOOK LIKE A BITCH?” or “I have had it with these motherfucking aliens on this motherfucking planet!” just once, for me.

The plot was good too, even though if you really break it down it was just a simple “bad guy wants to kick Earth’s ass, kick his ass instead” kind of deal. But thankfully it’s a good balance of action and story, although there’s a significant stretch in the middle that, while featuring great dialogue and character interaction, would benefit from a minor fistfight or maybe just an arm wrestling competition or a beer pong match or a wet t-shirt contest.

But enough of my ass-kissing, the only thing I didn’t like about is kind of nitpicky and petty, but I just don’t see why you would need an archer for this superhero squad. I know that Hawkeye was part of the original team; he is certainly good at arching, and he contributes a lot more to the final climactic battle than Scarlett Johansson does, at least from a fighting standpoint as I am convinced that Johansson’s ass was the most important part of that scene. The beef I have with a bowman among the super soldiers and the high-tech battle suits and demigods is that a bow and arrow just seems pitiful by comparison.

I mean, how much help can you be when every attack you have can be thwarted by a stiff breeze? And there was plenty of wind, Hawkeye’s two big action sequences are aboard a flying aircraft carrier amongst some of the biggest turbines in the history of turbindom, and at the end where the bad guys are flying around the city, big ones that certainly are creating plenty of backdraft out of their butts and you figure there’d be plenty of crosswind to thwart all of those projectiles. How did Hawkeye get trained on a bow and arrow anyway, in this the 21^st freaking century, surrounded by laser freaking guns? Was the defense budget so strained what with the purchase of flying Navy ships and all the clothing the Hulk goes through that you had to revert back to weaponry out of fashion since around the time of “Braveheart”? Is the Avengers 2 going to have a guy wielding a shillelagh or a slingshot?

Even if it is, I am going to see it, probably at midnight on whatever Friday morning it airs. And who knows, maybe I’ll have a female companion, but somehow I doubt it…

Now I’m depressed. Go away.

TALL DUDE’S RATING:  4.5 OUT OF 5 STARS

Still A Better Love Story Than Twilight: The Tall Dude Reviews ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’

Kristen Stewart is not a good actress. I haven’t seen all the Twilight films, would sooner get devoured by topless werewolves than finish out the series, but I can’t imagine that the Stewart in those films would be any better than the blank slate playing Snow White in this movie.

Snow White and the Huntsman is basically Snow White the charming animated picture with a few notable changes.

The transmogrifying wicked witch in the animated film changes into a hot transsexual evil witch played very WT-Effilly by Charlize Theron.

The animals in the Disney picture were incredibly capable, assisting in the climactic battle against the wicked witch, and they were better at chores than Snow White herself. The forest animals in Snow White and the Huntsman not only pussy out when it came to fighting the forces of the evil tranny queen, but they pull a Tall Dude when it comes time to clean up the kitchen and don’t lift a furry freaking finger.

The dwarves, staples of the 1937 film, are also dramatically different in this new incarnation. While Bashful, Dopey and co. were good at mining, singing and making messes for the women and animal-folk to clean up.

The 2012 dwarves, in addition to being a who’s-who of British movie gangsters…and Nick Frost, can’t sing for shit, and they try, which is worse. They can kick a decent amount of ass, even with names like Beith, Gort and-God help me-Quert.

One of my biggest gripes about the movie is the allusions to better movies than itself. Stop me if you’ve seen this before. A wide sweeping shot with mountains and epic music while nine companions, including dwarves and an archer, march along to a faraway place. The main baddie reaches into the naked chest of an innocent young man to rips his heart out.  A pale-ass female lead has to choose between to douchebags trying to protect her from supernatural forces.

That last reference, for those scoring at home, was from the Twilight series, the only reason Kristen Stewart is in this or any other stupid film. Stewart, blandly playing a template upon which any number of doe-eyed female movie goers can thrust themselves, again finds herself the rounded third corner in a warped love triangle. This triangle, like its counterpart in Twilight, is stupid and the right choice is painfully obvious.

Prince Charming…I’m sorry, Prince WILLIAM, played by Sam Claffin, has the royal chops and the history with Snow White to provide a tempting choice for any princess. However, much like his vampire counterpart in other Stewart films, he just glitters too much in most of the scenes, and just doesn’t provide a lot of romance in the scenes in which he probably should.

Chris Hemsworth plays Thor…I’m sorry, The Huntsman, and has both the ruggedness and the emotional frailty that seem to attract every girl ever. Plus he has a big-ass hammer to call down thunderbolts to…dammit…I mean a big-ass axe which he uses to hack at the bad guys, instead of Prince William, who uses a pussy bow and arrow and runs away like a girl when enemies get to close.

While the film subtly-and not so subtly-implies that the Huntsman is Mr. Snow White, their interaction is limited and not very romantic, the most moving,-if one can even call it that-scene between the two happens when Snow White is dead (Oh, Spoiler Alert: SNOW WHITE DIES). And any romantic subplot in either direction isn’t really pursued and has no indication of continuance.

In conclusion, Snow White just doesn’t add enough to the original tale to warrant a reimagining, and plus it has neither nudity nor Samuel L. Jackson (or any other black people for that matter), so I really just can’t like it.

TALL DUDE’S RATING: 1 OUT OF 5 STARS

The Girl with the Space Dragon Penises: The Tall Dude Reviews PROMETHEUS

This is my first movie review. Sorry about all the penile references. Whoomp, here it is.

No matter what kind of movie I walk into, be it horror, action or romantic comedy, I have a few expectations. Three, really. If these aren’t met, chances are that my review will be less than positive.

First of all, any movie without Samuel L. Jackson automatically loses at least a half of a star. Sorry, can’t be helped.

Secondly, any film in which my legs can’t fit comfortably in the seat loses another half-star. If I wanted to watch a movie with my knees shoved into my chest, I’d fly coach.

And my third, final and most important expectation when The Tall Dude walks into a movie: I would like to see a little nudity.

Female is preferred, although some tasteful male nudity will at least be tolerated. It doesn’t have to be a lot of skin, maybe even just a quarter-nip, but whenever said nakedness appears, I always feel better about the movie in general, and am more willing to give back some fractional stars.

So when I walked into Prometheus yesterday, I was hoping for a least some of my conditions to be met.  I knew going in that it would be a longshot to have Jules Winfield make an appearance, but the film did feature Iris Elba, a worthy substitute who I would watch in just about anything, chocolate man-ass or no.  Automatic 1/2 of a star.

Also, the Cineplex I was watching it in had nice wide aisles for my big ass to stretch out in, and as an added bonus, they had an ABC license. So I could sip on a bourbon and coke slushy while I so comfortably reclined. WHY AREN’T MORE THEATERS DOING THIS? Half-star, PLUS another whole bonus star.

So before we even get to The Tall Dude’s third and most important necessity for a great movie, this flick is already at two stars, and we’re not even done with the previews! Now I just need to see some R-rated stuff and it can bask in the glow of all that is me.

I figured going in that there might be a good chance I could see something. The cast, certainly the actresses, have been willing to lose the laundry before. Noomi Rapace showed just about everything in the excellent Swedish Dragon Tattoo trilogy, and Charlize Theron has been nude in just about every other film she’s been in. On top of that they both look amazing.

And even amongst the dudes the movie sported the likes of Michael Fassbender, who has been cut like a Spartan warrior in pretty much every movie he’s been in since…well, he played a Spartan warrior in “300.” So when I sat down to watch this film, I was expecting a cheek or two.

Disappointingly, but in hindsight not unexpectedly, I didn’t get any nudity, at least not on anything human.

Yes, while the earlier Alien films featured hulking jet black death machines crawling on ceilings and effortlessly turning dozens of people into human wasabi paste via their giant claws and mouths coming out of other mouths, Prometheus features the aliens as a bunch of vagina and penis-faced phallic uglies who spend the bulk of the movie probing, penetrating and squirting all over, around and in pretty much the whole cast. By the time the climax (pun intended) of the film rolled around and unleashed the biggest monster johnson of them all, I almost wished I had just seen naked daddy parts flopping around in space for the previous two hours.

That being said, they were awfully pretty space penises. In fact the whole movie was gorgeous, not only in the sprawling outer space scenes and the panoramic views of the various landscapes, but also in the interior shots of spaceships, caves and alien structures. There was a stunning amount of detail in every panel on every wall and every frame had a crispness too it and was shot in a way that has surpassed any other movie in recent memory.

It’s like Avatar, except with more dicks.

And also like Avatar, it has those grand sweeping vistas and eye-exploding effects, but when you really break it down it has a plot and setting that was pretty much identical to not only most of the other Alien movies, but any of the dozen or so deep-space horror films that always seem to be so popular.

The film sees a research team, featuring a sexy scientist (Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw), a sexy executive (Theron as Meredith Vickers), a sexy robot (Fassbender as David) and other crewmen, some sexy, some not so much, on an expedition to follow clues left on Earth that might lead to an alien civilization and the truth behind the creation of human life itself.

They chase this lead to a faraway planet where they discover deep secrets hidden for countless millennia, and a buttload of aliens and their genitals.

Besides that, it plays out like almost every other Alien film, even though those behind the film went to great lengths to label this as a quasi-spiritual prequel to Aliens, and not necessarily attached to that roller coaster of a series.

So many of the same things happen you wonder if Ridley Scott shouldn’t have just remade the first one instead. The big mega-corporation turns out to have its own agenda regarding the mission, the friendly android turns out to be less than helpful to the non-synthetic members of the crew, the black guy turns out to be kind of a badass, and the female lead spends an inordinate amount of the film in her underwear. Not that I was complaining about the last part.

Even the ending, which may or may not set itself up for a sequel, does little that you haven’t already seen at some point, although it does provide an interesting new storyline if it were to be pursued, which seeing as how well this movie is supposed to do, you know a sequel’s got to be on the way.

In conclusion, if you see one movie featuring good-looking but malevolent space dongs playing limp biscuit with a fully-clothed sugar cookie of humanity, Prometheus might just be for you.

Just bring booze. And some hand sanitizer.

Meet The Tall Dude Part 2

And now with the intro out of the way allow me to treat you to some quick biographical information about the concentrated magnificence that is The Tall Dude.

I was born an enormous baby in Louisville, KY in 1987. I spent my youth basically growing and not being very good at basketball.

After I finished high school I studied Journalism at Western Kentucky University, writing for the student paper and kicking ass.

After I left school, I went into exile up in Lafayette, IN with my parents for a little over a year. While that was good for The Tall Dude, the rolling fields of corn and cows and farmhouses never really felt like home to me, and I longed to return to Louisville, where everything makes sense. Finally a little over a month ago I was able to realize that dream. I have returned to the 502, with a vengeance.

So here I stand now, trying to get a job and my aunt’s two dogs to like me while plotting my eventual rule over the city entire.

I’m a huge fan of the Louisville Cardinals athletic program, owing the university my very existence, as well as every professional team that comes out of Detroit, as I have for years! That no one can proclaim me a bandwagon Lions fan.

I like to read, write, play video games, eat copious amounts of food and stare at the tops of peoples’ heads. Not necessarily in that order.

I’m sure I’ll go into more detail about history as this blog wears on, but until such a time, just know that I’m big and I’m a writer.

Let me take care of the rest.

Meet The Tall Dude

Sup Midgets!

I, Chris Acree, otherwise known as The Tall Dude, have decided that the world simply needs more of me.

Hence, this blog.

Not to be confused with a sophomoric effort I may or may not have started several years ago via Blogspot and never updated, The Weather Up Here will seek to answer that age-old question that I and all other giant dudes have been asked over and over again through time immemorial.

How’s the weather up there?

Instead of my usual reaction to that question: Spitting on one’s head as saying “It’s Raining.” I chose to make this blog.

You want to know how the weather is up here? Well allow me to be your meteorologist. The forecast calls for a veritable tsunami of news, opinion and other random crap that happens to come out of my cro magnon head. I might review some movies or video games. I might write something sports related. I may spend 4,000 words bitching. Who knows? A weatherman isn’t accurate 100% of the time.

So get out your get out your rain slicker and your umbrella, and be prepared to tremble in awe of the maelstrom that is The Weather Up Here.