Caffeinated Clint – 5/05/08

Terminator PG

It seems a few of you think I’ve been a bit too soft in the last couple of editions of Caffeinated Clint – maybe it’s the Decaf? Maybe it’s my over-enjoyment that Battlestar Galactica has finally returned to TV – so I’ve decided change up today’s edition. Originally, I was to list the top-twenty most cuddliest aliens in cinema. Instead, I’ll – and I can feel the blood boiling already; I’m ready! I’m ready! – list :

10 People/Places/Things that deserve a big fat FUCK YOU!

1. Those that don’t say THANK YOU or ACKNOWLEDGE something you’ve given them (I don’t mean Crabs, I mean like a CD or a poster – – though even if I’d given you crabs, I’d expect the credit; credit where credit’s due, ya’know?). Does it take a lot to SMS or email a quick ‘thanks buddy!’. No, it doesn’t. I don’t live for licking stamps, I don’t even get off on popping envelopes in mail-boxes. And quite frankly, I couldn’t give a shit if your niece gets that ‘Miley Cyrus’ poster she’s been looking for. Starting May 2008, I’m kicking off a black-list. And you, yes you pimples, are on it. At least until you say THANKS – or agree to wash the hardened shit from my cat’s hind legs. I’m keeping the Miley Cyrus posters for myself.

2. Whoever thought it was a good idea to take all these good little Asian horror movies and remake them for American audiences deserves to be obliterated by the Iron Manger’s metal boot! Yes, “The Ring” was good, but the rest of them have been absolute shit. I never walk out of movies – never! – but I walked out of “The Grudge 2”, I just couldn’t take any more of that dull, pointless piece of crap. The studios are still churning them out, too. Hopefully after “One Missed Call” – which made about 50 cents at the box office – they’ll start to wither off a bit. I’d much rather see another of those ‘kid enters a magical land’ fantasy movies – which I hate more than my mother-in-law’s cooking – than another one of these dicky horror movies, where some bony Asian bitch is crawling backwards up a wall, leaving a trail of black shit. Puh-leeease!

3. Graphic Designers. A lot of you have it ssoooooo good….. You deliver absolute shit… and yet, you get paid fairly kindly. I can’t tell you how many times Pete (the site’s co-owner) and I have been burnt by a graphic designer or self-confessed web guru. One of them took off to London with his advance, another drew something up in Photoshop that looked like a comic book one would draw as a 6-year-old. The worst part of it? Both those guys wouldn’t talk to us on the phone, nor would they listen to our instructions before starting the job. They’re obviously used to dedicating a couple of hours on a job – churning them out – and then moving onto the next. From now on, I’ll be drawing the illustrations of a naked Weeksy riding a unicorn, for the website (Fucking Awesome – Weeksy). On the other hand, there’s a bunch of great designers out there, working on reasonable rates, that deserve the work and don’t get it – – – here’s hoping God amends the balance.

4. “Clint, can you run these banners for me at the top of your page? ASAP!”. Um, No, I can’t – not for free anyway. Ya see, Moviehole actually survives via the advertising, and if you want me to run banners for you, you have to pay xxx amount to our advertising broker – and they’ll set that up. The last time I did the favour of running someone a free banner on the site – which cost me a couple of hundred bucks a week; is that fair? – they complained when I told them the banner needed to be modified slightly to fit in with the allocated space assigned for banner ads. I believe that was this person’s way of saying Thank You. So from now on, there’s no favours – not when it comes to the site anyway (I’ll still wear the glow beads from my nipples at your functions). My daughter needs to eat, woman!

5. There’s a lot of fake shit in the industry I work in, that’s a give-in, but most of the people that work in the industry, deserve to be here; they’re tailor-made for it. There’s just one person, or rather one distributor, that needs to dig up their mission statement again. Somewhere along the line, they’ve been a fed a lie that Satan is their boss – and they should go out of their way to make sure they treat the media, like they’d treat anyone in their boss’s hot homeland.
This particular studio has had it in for Moviehole from day one – they’ve just been out-and-out rude to ‘everyone’ at the site, the only time they’d write in is to complain about an interview – usually they’re miffed because we’ve sourced our own interviews for something, and tried to avoid us at any cost (at the disgust of some of the filmmakers whose films they’ve distributed. A week after press interviews have taken place for one of their films, you can guarantee that someone involved in that film – be it an actor or director, even a writer – will contact us to ask “Why didn’t you guys get to interview anyone from xxxx?’). One of our writers even kindly called this company one day to ask for press notes. What did the company’s publicist do? Well, she hung up in his ear. I kid you not.
We’ve been on-and-off this studio’s media list for a couple of years now. Got back on this year, and made sure I went to every screening they invited me/Moviehole too – just so they couldn’t find a reason to remove me. As it turned out, I had to miss one media screening – for a film, mind you, which nobody else decided to go and see either – because my daughter was sick in hospital. Bad luck, this company says, you’re off the list.
So, we’re not going to bother any more. The rest of the studios will be looked after big-time. You’ll have to explain to those behind the films you’re distributing and marketing why we – and those other film websites you don’t think are worth bothering with – haven’t covered your movie. Let’s see if you can come up with something that doesn’t make you sound like a cold-hearted egotistical bitch. Good luck!
And the next time you ask us to remove something from the site, or run a press release, or “help you out”, I’ll forward you a bunch of these ‘penis enlargement’ messages that flood my inbox every day.
It really is the company that is missing out in this case – we’ve millions of visitors each month, imagine how many more tickets we might’ve helped sell!

6. Those that are fascinated with Celebrity – I don’t get it. I was at the Logie Awards last night, and it absolutely amazed me that even the most undeserving of the ‘celebrity’ tag – the guy who reads the traffic reports on the radio, or someone who does the movie reviews on Sunday morning TV – would have people screaming their name and climbing over people’s backs to get an autograph. You do know that these people aren’t celebrities right? You do know that they’ve done nothing to deserve your screams? There were young girls near at tears because a radio personality – ha! – agreed to take a photo with them, and another bunch who near fainted at the sight of someone who hasn’t worked in television for fifteen years. We’re not as obsessed with celebrity here in Australia, as they are in the states, but it’s still sickening. Richard Wilkins, the entertainment reporter, walked the red-carpet last night (he gets an invite to the Logies, when actors that should’ve been invited didn’t?!), and 14-year-old girls were hanging out their arms, just hoping he’d graze them, or stop and say hello? What the fuck!!!??
A friend of mine recently said they saw a barley-known late-night TV host on the street and near fainted. It was that exciting. Does it make anyone else want to vomit? Yes, I can imagine getting a bit joyous around Harrison Ford – I did; he was Han Solo for christ’s sakes! – or Keanu Reeves – I didn’t, but a lot of chicks would, and I understand that – but not some disc jockey that’s getting $12 an hour to play Bon Jovi songs on the radio, that’s fuckin nonsense.

7. Food Courts. I’m getting sick of the slop they serve up. My wife ordered a big, expensive plate of shaved meat from a Turkish place yesterday. You should have seen what they gave her instead! It was a small, expensive plate of chewy fat. It was absolutely disgusting. So disgusting that I returned to the place of purchase and told them they could stick the meat up their ass – which is probably where they fished it out from in the first place. My advice? The only place to buy Turkish food from in a Food Court – at a Shopping Centre – is an Australian chain called ‘’Ala Turko”, they are excellent. Real Meat. Real Value. The rest deserve a visit from a health inspector… and the ACCC!
Here’s the best Turkish place in the Knox Area : AlaTurko

8. It fuckin’ annoys me how The Veronica’s sound like the girls are on the verge of orgasm in every song they do. “I… feel… ooooh… so…uh… ohh… untouched… ahhh”. Or maybe it just distracts me when I’m driving. One way or the other, they need to find a good plumber to patch that hole. Nothing against The Veronica’s, but I just think it’s pretty clear that they’re using their music as a way of announcing to the public that they’re keen for some kind of sandwich… (Samantha Fox, whose Touch Me distracted many of us in our school years, will attest to that).

9. Brett Ratner. I still can’t get over how royally he fucked us with “X- Men : The Last Stand”. If the first two “X-Men” movies hadn’t been so good, it might’ve been as noticeable, but they were, and it was, and I’m still friggin’ angry as hell about it. The ending of “X-Men 2” set up so much for a future sequel, and promised some exciting things were ahead. I almost feel like contacting Avi and stressing they erase “X3” from existence and start over. Who else would be keen to see that?

10. PG-13 movies. This is nuts. Imagine if they’d given Rambo a PG-13 rating? There would be no fuckin’ reason to watch it!
“Prom Night” could have been tolerable if it had some actually scares or horror in it, but with it’s PG-13 rating, it not only lost its balls, but all reason for existence!
The latest victim of the PG-13 curse? “Terminator 4”. I shit you not. The next Terminator movie will be a family-friendly experience. Yes, some robots may get crushed – – but you won’t hear Kyle Reese dropping the F-Bomb, nor will you see blood drain from anyone’s limbs as they’re thrown from wall to wall by a T-800.
Pussies!

Here’s what Variety says about it : “The “Terminator” series is one of the highest-grossing R-rated franchises of all time, with the first three films having grossed more than $1.03 billion worldwide. But Halcyon producers thought it was time to broaden the upcoming fourth film’s audience base, and they believe the PG-13 won’t compromise the series’ gritty vision.
“The ratings have changed,” said Halcyon co-founder and co-CEO Victor Kubicek, a broker-turned-writer-producer. “The PG-13 has increased in intensity.”
Move follows last year’s “Die Hard” film, “Live Free or Die Hard,” which went out with a PG-13 after three prior R-rated installments. That pic went on to gross $382.1 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing in the series.
A family-friendly rating opens many doors, including a “Terminator Salvation” licensing deal for action figures with Playmates Toys.
“Our merchandising program will be the largest to date for ‘The Terminator,’ ” said Halcyon co-founder and co-CEO Derek Anderson, ex-owner of ad agency In the Mix, who adds that he had not discussed the possibility of an R-rating with Warners. “We won’t force it. We are carrying on in the tradition of the mythology, with an exciting approach to the action. If we can make a compelling film to reach the widest audience, why wouldn’t we do it?”” (Um, because we expect some bone-crunching and ass-kicking from this series?!!)