I don’t know why I never got around to seeing the THE CROW sequel from the director of SIX-STRING SAMURAI. Always was curious. Still took me 19 years. Lance Mungia’s THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER, just like the previous one, was meant for theaters, but I think it only played somewhere around here? Wiki(dprayer)pedia says its theatrical run was only in Seattle and only for one week, and I do remember seeing an ad for it and being confused, but I was thinking it was in Eastern Washington. Anyway, I didn’t go.
When I saw DOMINO on opening day in 2005, I really thought it was the worst shit ever. In fact, at some point I earnestly added a “the worst shit ever” tag to my review of it. Tony Scott’s most chaotic ever visual style and editing just scraped against me and took me out of the story (to the extent that there was one), and I fixated on that and raged against it in my review. This had happened to me only a couple of times before: first with CON AIR, then ARMAGEDDON, and later it would happen with TRANSFORMERS and DOOMSDAY. But DOMINO is the most stylistically aggressive of any of those, and arguably the most pretentious.
In my review I said Scott was trying to seem young and edgy, compared it to getting his ear pierced. In my mind at that time he was the guy who directed TOP GUN, and TOP GUN was a movie for jocks, military lovers and top 40 listeners. When that one came out I didn’t notice that its style was revolutionary, I just knew everybody loved it including my entire sixth grade class, which meant it was the height of mainstream popular culture about a year or two before I would start kneejerk rebelling against such things. So to have the TOP GUN guy, almost 20 years later, trying to do what screenwriter Richard Kelly calls on the commentary track “punk rock,” was just a joke to me. (read the rest of this shit…)
“He had an uneventful childhood. He played baseball with the other kids on the block, became fascinated with the antics of what later became his heroes – The Three Stooges, read Spiderman comic books, thought Jerry Lewis was hilarious and the Little Rascals even more so. What influenced Raimi to become the ‘horror meister’ of slash and gore films is not found in his past.”
—Dead Auteur: How a 20-year-old ex-college student carved out his horror niche in Hollywood by Sue Uram, Cinefantastique, August 1992
Immediately following Raimi’s very serious director period, his career changed drastically again. After so many stabs at the mainstream, he finally made the leap to genuine blockbuster filmmaking, bringing one of the most famous characters in the history of American pop culture to the big screen for the first time. This is not the use-Intro-Vision-to-stretch-the-budget-enough-to-try-to-compete-in-summer of DARKMAN and ARMY OF DARKNESS, or the work-with-huge-stars-but-scare-off-boring-people-by-doing-something-different-with-them of THE QUICK AND THE DEAD. I’m talking a super hero event movie with ten times the budget of DARKMAN, working with Sony Digital Imageworks to pioneer effects techniques that nobody was even sure would be possible, and finally sharing his talents with pretty much the widest audience possible for a movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
THE PAPERBOY is the new one from Academy Award nominee for Best Director Lee Daniels. That’s the guy that did PRECIOUS, BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE as well as SHADOWBOXER, BASED ON THE IDEA THAT HELEN MIRREN AND CUBA GOODING JR. ARE ASSASSINS AND SHE RAISED HIM BUT ALSO THEY’RE FUCKING AND SHE HAS CANCER. I feel like the critical community embraced PRECIOUS without really picking up on how nutty it was, or doing a background check on Mr. Daniels’s previous work. So they did cartoony “wh-wh-whUHHH?” double-takes when THE PAPERBOY played at Cannes and had a part where Nicole Kidman territorially pisses on Zac Efron from HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. Because it’s a Lee Daniels movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
Mr. Majestyk on Masters of the Universe (2026): “Vern, I don’t recall Whedon ever undercutting Iron Man. I think you’re thinking of IRON MAN 3, when Tony’s posed…” Jun 9, 10:59
Muh on Masters of the Universe (2026): “Oh as for TMNT, I have friends who have very young kids and maybe too young for watching stuff like…” Jun 9, 10:39
Muh on Masters of the Universe (2026): “The Batman gliding bit works because it’s ot really a deflating joke. It kind of ups the stakes because he’s…” Jun 9, 10:36
E-Squared on Heavy: “For the longest time, I was curious about this movie. As someone who has been heavyset for almost his whole…” Jun 9, 10:03
RBatty024 on Masters of the Universe (2026): “It’s a real shame that the movie feels the need to poke fun at itself so much because it seems…” Jun 9, 08:02
VERN on Masters of the Universe (2026): “I think that Joss Whedon and James Gunn have both excelled at pouring their hearts into their characters and being…” Jun 9, 07:35
Alex R on Masters of the Universe (2026): “Knowing pop culture winks have for sure been around forever. The first part of the first novel, Don Quixote, was…” Jun 9, 06:17
CJ Holden on Masters of the Universe (2026): “If there is one thing that this discussion has proved, it’s that variations of “Deflating a movie with jokes” have…” Jun 9, 05:34
RRA on Masters of the Universe (2026): “A good question is why MOTU didn’t have the multi-generational power of TMNT? Was MOTU just specific an aesthetic tied…” Jun 9, 04:46
Stacy L on Masters of the Universe (2026): “Surely Aladdin (1992) was the defining example of adding self-aware jokes and deflating sincerity with quips? Just because it had…” Jun 9, 03:53
RRA on Masters of the Universe (2026): “On topic of Hollywood learning the wrong lessons, reminds me of the current thinkpiece “wisdom” after OBSESSION and BACKROOMS is…” Jun 9, 02:16
RRA on Masters of the Universe (2026): “Blaming GOTG or Marvel films is like blaming SCREAM for the wave of post-modernistic horror films. Not the OGs fault…” Jun 9, 02:09
Muh on Masters of the Universe (2026): “Shrek was the culmination of snark maybe, but y’all are forgetting the 90s where if you’d have to BEG for…” Jun 8, 22:45
CJ Holden on Masters of the Universe (2026): “Tim Bobo, I think the GOTG movies are not to blame for it at all, because they are brutally honest…” Jun 8, 22:25
grimgrinningchris on Masters of the Universe (2026): “I’m not going to “read the rest of this shit” or any of these comments- unless you address me by…” Jun 8, 22:18
When I saw DOMINO on opening day in 2005, I really thought it was the worst shit ever. In fact, at some point I earnestly added a “the worst shit ever” tag to 
“He had an uneventful childhood. He played baseball with the other kids on the block, became fascinated with the antics of what later became his heroes – The Three Stooges, read Spiderman comic books, thought Jerry Lewis was hilarious and the Little Rascals even more so. What influenced Raimi to become the ‘horror meister’ of slash and gore films is not found in his past.”
“If anyone’s gonna pee on him, it’s gonna be me!”
