[rating: 4] Jules: You scratch our backs, we’ll scratch yours… Seth: Yeah, well, the funny thing about my back is, it’s on my cock. If you can’t appreciate one or more aspects of comedic gold in the above snippet of dialogue, then you probably aren’t ready for Superbad. The good news? Writer Seth Rogen, whose high school life the film is said to be based upon, doesn’t care if you’re ready or not. Rogen stars in two other Judd Apatow productions, The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, both of which ended up being stealth chick flicks—but he stood out each time as the best aspect of the movie. This time, he was given complete creative control (small aspects of his life and personality were implanted in the former films as well), and he did not disappoint. And, while those other films (and most comedies) try to have something for everyone, this one is—finally!—one for the rest of us. You know, those of us who already realize that sometimes people fall in love, and lots of times putting yourself in a new situation (read: being a ‘fish out of water’) is what you need to “grow” as a person. This is a film for those of ...

BOOP! BOOP! BOOP! THIS IS A SNACK FOOD ALERT! Are you sitting down? You should sit down. I'm here today to tell you that if you were to go to your local grocery store, you would be able to buy—you don't even need a permit or anything!—Reese's Collector Edition Elvis Peanut Butter & Banana Creme Cups! If you even think I am joking, I will hunt you down and kill you, because this is not the kind of thing one jokes about. How do they taste? Well, they mostly just taste like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, but if you shove the whole thing in your mouth at once you kind of get a bit of a Little Debbie Banana Twins vibe. But that's not the point. The point is that a candy this bizarre is the very definition of "limited time only." It won't be here for long, so I encourage you to go snatch up as many as you can while you've got the chance. Let's use this opportunity to create a new page in our shared cultural/snack-related book, and to send the message to the candy makers that we are in complete support ...

[rating: 1] Truly, there is only one way to effectively review a movie like this. Jurassic Park III brings with it many temptations to stray away from the even-handed objectivity required in a review. That's why I've devised a completely scientific, peer-approved and awesome method for looking at the film and judging its merits. It's a little thing I like to call "Jurassic Park III: Hows Come It Sucks So Bad?" Reason It Sucks So Bad No. 1! Full on dinosaur action right off the bat. As soon as our characters—although I really hesitate to call them that—land on the island, this movie's new chief scary dinosaur, the spinosaurus, busts out of the trees and munches people up and shows himself to the audience in all his glory. The movie's just begun and there's nowhere to go. The original Jurassic Park built suspense masterfully. When we think we're gonna get our first glimpse of a T-Rex, we don't; he's held off for later and the tension builds. All through the picture people were talking about how scary and smart and determined to eat you the velociraptors are, but their full terror isn't unleashed until the movie's almost at a close. That movie made the ...

Love is a fairly amazing thing, but I suppose we all know that by now; it's most unlikely that so much of our poetry, cinema and popular music would be devoted to the subject if it were something mundane. Among all of the myriad characteristics of this concept we call love, the most remarkable is its ability to grow anew in fields thought long ago to be sewn with salt. Indeed, the deepest, truest, most intense love affair of my life—which had, I thought, long ago been rendered nothing more than a pile of spent ashes—now blazes again with the intensity of the desert sun. And it all started up again because of a trip to the grocery store in 2005. The original tenure of this love affair lasted from my very early childhood until the spring of 1999. It was that May when my heart was first broken into pieces and my passion began to slip out through the cracks. In the years that followed, you might hardly have realized that the love had ever been there. I remained on good terms with and even fond of that which had originally captivated me so, but all the power, intensity and—most ...

[rating: 5] Look on this movie, ye mighty, and despair! This is the comedy of comedies, the absolute ne plus ultra of humor. Every other movie with laughs on the agenda—whether it’s a “comedy with a message” like this one or a straight-ahead comedy like Airplane!—wishes it could be this good. All others are mere pretenders to the throne; Dr. Strangelove will reign forever as the king of comedies. What makes it so good is that it has just about every type of joke there is. By the nature of the story, most of the comedy is satire, but that’s not all Dr. Strangelove has to offer. There’s slapstick, there’s non-sequitur humor, there’s funny accents, there’s poop humor, and there’s a subtle (or not-so-subtle) dick joke or sexual innuendo just about every time you turn around. Strictly in terms of the comedic content, the movie has absolutely everything you could want. The story centers on a B-52 that’s been given erroneous orders to nuke the Soviet Union by the insane General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden). While efforts are made to subdue the rogue officer and obtain the code necessary to recall the bomber, the best parts of the movie take place in ...

Sunday, August 12. I'd call it the best day of the year so far, and it's all thanks to K-Mart. Going to K-Mart can be a depressing prospect these days; the proliferation of Wal-Mart in recent years has left the competitor in a bad way. The employees usually seem unhappy, like condemned prisoners hoping for a last minute call from the governor they know in their hearts will never come. Things are often disorganized in the store, with stacks of unshelved merchandise here and there in the aisles. But none of that matters anymore, because K-Mart offered me my salvation. I was in the store at about 8:30 or so on Sunday night. I don't even remember what I went in there for because once I saw what I saw it completely consumed my entire being. While most of the seasonal display section was devoted to that phrase that strikes terror into the heart of every child, the dreaded "Back to School," tucked carefully away in the middle of it all was one little rack that brought a smile to my face rather than a grimace. It was a rack of candy, all surrounded by pictures of bats and the words ...

You know what I think is the best scene in Jurassic Park? Here's the transcript. GRANT: Smug smirk! MALCOM: Mumblemumblemumble. GRANT: Smirk? TIM: Whine! Whine whine? Whine. LEX: Dr. Grant! Pule! MALCOM: Ha ha! Mumblemumble...uh...mumble. Aaaaaaand...scene.

[rating: 0] Any time somebody says something like "That was the worst movie of all time," you know that they're really just engaging in hyperbole and so that kind of statement is really pointless. But, pointless or not, I'm gonna go ahead and call Pledge This! the single most terrible thing to have ever been captured on film, including the Kennedy assassination. No other movie could be more painfully awful. By all quantifiable methods, this is without a doubt the absolute worst piece of crap in this or any other universe. I fucking hate this movie. You'd think the National Lampoon folks would know a thing or two about crafting college raunch comedies; they did, after all, give us the single greatest example of the genre. But apparently the entire creative wad was shot on Animal House and everything else has just been worthless. And Pledge This! is the most worthless of them all. The "story," such as it is, revolves around a crop of freshman girls who need a place to stay when their dormitory is closed following a feces-spewing toilet explosion. (If you think that when this toilet explodes, there is not a fat girl using it, then you obviously know ...

[display_podcast] Finally, the episode in which Eric and Mark stop numbering the episodes! (For the record, this is episode three.) This week, the duo discuss the upcoming Chipmunks movie, and how it fits in with other sorry-ass novelty remakes--such as the Garfield and Underdog movies--as well as the careers of the stars cast in them. Can you identify what two of those three movies have in common? That's right, Underdog and The Chipmunks both star Kevin Smith-alumnus and former badass Jason Lee! Eric and Mark ask the tough questions, such as whether or not it's time to bury Brodie. Curious about the state of potentially profitable remakes? It's all here, my friends.

Mark's recent blog praising the SNES got me thinking about some of my favorite games for that system. Super Mario World was great, of course, as was Super Mario Kart. I was always a big fan of the caveman adventure Joe & Mac. Super Empire Strikes Back is perhaps the hardest video game ever made for any system. Super Castlevania IV was my favorite game in the series. And let's not forget the system's Family Feud cartridge, where you could sometimes answer "refrigerator" and have it accept it as "trampoline." But of all the games, there is one that stands out above the rest for me, and it stands out for a simple reason. That reason is this: I will completely kick your ass at Tetris Attack. That's right. You, you and you. I'll kick all your asses. I don't care how good you think you are at video games or your previous track record with puzzle games like this one. None of that matters. What matters is that when you play Tetris Attack against me, I will kick your ass and I will not stop kicking your ass until it is bloody and raw and you are crying like a ...