With the exception of two deeply traumatic weeks round about 1995, I’ve worn a full beard for nearly all of my adult life. My father has had one for most of his grown-up years, too, and so did my late uncle Louie. Beards are cool, man. But that’s not a message that’s too widely accepted here in arch-conservative Utah. Seriously, the population here is overwhelmingly clean-shaven. You see a fair number of goatees among the younger crowd, but very few full-on, manly-men-style beards. Moreover, a great many people in these parts seem to be profoundly uncomfortable with the thought of facial fur; I’ve heard beards decried as “unclean,” “unattractive,” and “Satanic.” I’ve heard people say that men with beards are “untrustworthy” because they’re “hiding something.” I even had a young lady tell me once as I struggled through a dry-spell that the reason I couldn’t get a date was because women don’t like beards. No women. Not one. (I suspect The Girlfriend might have something to say about that!)

Fortunately, not everyone in the world is so ignorant. Some people are sophisticated enough to recognize the inherent, undeniable grooviness of The Beard. People like whoever made today’s video treat, which cleverly reveals the true reason why the Lord of the Rings movies rocked:

(Let me give you a hint: it’s because “Even the f***ing trees have beards!”)

I don’t know about you, but I want one of those limited-edition beard cases…

This is great… I just received a phone call from Samuel L. Jackson, telling me I have to pick up The Girlfriend on August 18th and get down to the theater to see his new film, Snakes on a Plane, which he promises just might be the greatest film ever made. He even threatens to come after me if I don’t see it. And who am I to argue with Samuel L. Muthaf****ng Jackson?
The movie is totally going to blow, of course, even if it does turn out to be entertaining. I’m thinking it may be right up there with Robot Jox for pure, joyful suckitude, or at least in the neighborhood of that other immortal airplane-based action flick, Passenger 57. But I’ve got to admit, the marketing behind this end-of-summer, bottom-of-the-barrel, B-movie schlocker has been absolutely brilliant, beginning months ago with the Internet word-of-mouth and all the various home-brewed video parodies (here’s a Salon article detailing the Snakes phenomenon; sorry in advance for making you sit through a commercial to read it) and leading right up to this personalized phone call thing. The rising buzz around this film has been been organic, it’s been fun, and it’s all felt decidedly non-corporate. These days, when even the most minor of releases gets a co-branded Happy Meal and wall-to-wall TV ads, the grass-roots enthusiasm for Snakes is truly refreshing, and genuinely enticing. Oh, yeah, I’ll see Snakes on a Plane. It’ll suck, but it’s earned the privilege of my curiosity, at least.

Incidentally, if you’d like to hear my phone call from Mr. Jackson, I’ve recreated it here. Give a listen. It’s pretty amusing…

I’ve found a new blog that belongs to Tom Richmond, an artist for MAD magazine. Like most young boys, I used to be infatuated with slapstick, grossness, and the general disrespect of one’s elders, so naturally I mis-spent a lot of my youth reading that silly rag; not surprisingly the movie parodies were always my favorite “articles,” and I find I can still remember punchlines from many of them.

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If you’re at all interested in special effects in the movies — the techniques that enable the Millenium Falcon to fly and Jurassic Park‘s T. Rex to run — then you probably know who Dennis Muren is. If you don’t, please allow me to introduce you: he was one of the founding members of Industrial Light & Magic, the company that grew out of the team George Lucas assembled to do the effects (FX) work on the original Star Wars, and he’s since gone to help pioneer just about every major advancement in the field over the last three decades. He’s worked on an astounding string of groundbreaking, FX-heavy movies. He’s the first visual effects artist to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And he also made a cameo appearance in Raiders of the Lost Ark — he’s the Nazi agent who glances out from behind the Life magazine when Indy boards the China Clipper to begin his quest for the Ark.

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It’s a mellow Friday morning here at my day job as we head into a three-day weekend. Seems like the perfect time for an amusing video, wouldn’t you say?

I’ve noticed kind of a mini-trend on the InterWebs recently, fake movie trailers that are edited and scored to make well-known films seem like something completely different: The Shining reinterpreted as a heartwarming family drama, for instance, or Stand By Me with gentle Gordie recast as some kind of psycho killer. But I think I’ve got one that has those beat: how about The Ten Commandments as a teen high-school comedy?

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This is interesting: I’ve run across a French trailer for the upcoming film Casino Royale, which producers hope will reinvigorate the 007 franchise with a new actor in the lead and a new realism in the storytelling (I understand they’ve ditched Q and the gadgets in favor of good old-fashioned fist-fights.) An English-language version has yet to be released, so if you don’t speak French — and I don’t myself — you’ll just have to guess at what’s going on. Not that this is so difficult; it’s a trailer for a James Bond film, after all.

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Not to be cruel or anything, but may we safely assume that Sharon Stone’s Hollywood career is now over? Honestly, who, aside from Stone herself, who hasn’t had a hit in years and is probably worried about making the mortgage, has been clamoring for a sequel to Basic Instinct? That movie is fourteen years old. Fourteen. In pop-cultural terms, 1992 may as well have been the Cretaceous Period. I seriously doubt the primary movie-going demographic these days — which would’ve been in diapers in ’92 — has ever even heard of Sharon Stone or seen that notorious leg-crossing scene. And I don’t think we, ahem, older viewers have shown much interest in the further adventures of Catherine Trammel, either.

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And now, as a public service to all those who don’t have the time or inclination to wade through my long, self-indulgent ramblings about why I like the movies I like but who still harbor a certain voyeuristic curiosity about the subject, here are the titles only, in convenient list format:

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