VMAs: Miley Cyrus

First this.

So, Van Toffler was talking to his “peeps” the other day, and was all like “Why are we still doing a video awards show when we don’t show videos anymore? Shouldn’t YouTube be doing this?” and after much soul searching decided to scrap the whole deal and show an episode of Toddlers in Tiaras. Wait, I’m sorry, the nanobots have just informed us that that toddler and her father are actually Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke.

• 0:14 Miley emerges from teddy-bear alien spaceship. = +5pts
• 0:14 Miley does raunchy-sexy the way you would expect Rick Santorum to do raunchy-sexy. = -10pts
• 0:23 Miley strokes her invisible weave, just to drive the point home. = -5pts (Get some real weave, ho!)
• 0:27 Those pink teddy bears look stoned. = +4.20pts (See what we did there?)
• 0:37 The real travesty of this performance is that Miley does not have the body to pull off any of this. Twerking requires booty, Exhibit A. = -34pts
• 0:47 Oh look, even with giant stuffed bears on their backs, her backup dancers look less ridiculous. = +17pts (For the dancers being awesome.) -8pts (For Miley standing next to them.)
• 0:53 You know, Miley’s tongue is really clean. Mad oral hygiene props. = +3pts
• 1:06 There is a moment in Step Up 2: The Streets where a character says something along the lines of “take that Disney shit out of here”—this is how we feel about Miley’s attempt to get dirty right here. It’s like a parody of female sexuality. = -28pts
• 1:20 Oh, she’s going to be singing? (No points, just surprised.)
• 1:23 I think Drake is playing Angry Birds. = +3pts (At least someone is enjoying this.)
• 1:29 The odds flicks to her clit during her dancing is distracting. We can’t help but think, "Here is a woman who's never actually touched her vagina.” = -10pts
• 1:30 Aaaaand, that crotch shot confirms once and for all that Miley has never had an orgasm in her life. Let’s start a kickstarter and get her one of these. = -6.9 pts 
• 1:48 Miley is involved in a non-con encounter between her mouth and the ass of an innocent back-up dancer. = -50pts 
• 2:24 Miley’s backup dancers throw their bodies over the grenade that is her awful flailing scarecrow dance moves and humanely shield our eyes. = +10pts
• 2:31 Did MTV give OneDirection booster seats? Is Rihanna stoned and LOVING this? Yes and Yes. = +8pts
• 3:00 Another crotch grab? She might as well wear a sign that says “virgin, circa 1980.” = -3pts
• 3:08 Speaking of the 80s, Beetlejuice! = -18pts
• 3:16 Well, it makes sense you would need a finger that big if you don’t know where your clit is. = -7 pts (SEX POSITIVE FEMINISMS! Our Bodies Our Selves!)
• 3:28 Okay, who wouldn’t rub their crotch juice on Robin Thicke, if given the chance and some good whiskey? = +2pts
• 3:55 The twerk heard round the world. Let’s be honest, the only person who was titillated was Ted Haggard. = -24pts
• 4:06 And with that thrust Ted Haggard had an accident in his pants. = +5pts (For making Ted Haggard have “the feelings.”)
• 4:16 And that final stanky finger bite with faux-sex-kitten face is the embodiment of everything that was wrong with this performance. = -8pts

Total Points = -154.7pts

So, at this point Mika Brzezinski stopped watching because she had to go rage-masturbate on her Egyptian cotton sheets repeating “She’s such an AWFUL role model for young girls!” over and over and over and over. The rest of the world noticed that MTV doesn’t give awards to black people anymore and just uses them as props to give white performers an “edge” so when the media decided to slut-shame Miley and ignore the minstrel show MTV put on the air, we all decided to turn off the TV and do something more useful with our lives.

Score Technician: Maya Mackrandilal

Silent Hill: Revelation

Set as an adaptation of Silent Hill 3, the most terrifying to-date of the series, Silent Hill: Revelation had, in theory, a sumptuous selection of both grotesque and petrifying scenarios to work with. With the perfect casting of Adelaide Clemens and Sean Bean as Heather and Harry Mason, the movie should have been a slam dunk guaranteed to satisfy Silent Hill fans on all levels. So why wasn’t it? The nanobots reveal the boring truth in this tell-all Scorecard!

• Opening the film with an homage to Silent Hill 3’s beginning in the rusted-out Lakeside Amusement Park. = +10pts 
• Bondage merry-go-round. = +3pts 
• Sean Bean dies in the first five minutes! = +4pts 
• Oh, it was only a dream. = -4pts 
• Sean Bean’s attempt at an American accent. = -3pts 
• Pop-Tart jump scare. = -7pts 
• Heather (Sharon? We lost track already) barely conceals her disappointment at receiving a white vest for her birthday. = -2pts 
• Sean Bean has been pulling out his daughter’s Silent Hill-related diary pages and saving them, possibly to make them into a collage to give her as another disappointing birthday present. = -4pts 
• Not being able to tell if the expository scene with Sean Bean and his ghost wife is a hallucination or a flashback. = -8pts 
• When the face of the hobo that Heather is trying to ignore suddenly turns into a sewn-up arse, she probably should have called in sick to school. = -3pts 
• Heather’s new school is apparently Bayside, and she’s the new Screech. = -4pts 
• Saying that someone’s clothes look like they came from Goodwill hasn’t been an insult since the screenwriters were in elementary school. = -3pts 
• Heather’s scathing speech does little to offend the disaffected Barbizon models that make up her new classmates. = -7pts 
• Jon Snow’s portrayal of Vincent (dressed more like a Vinnie) with an even worse attempt at an American accent than Sean Bean’s. = -6pts 
• Awkward social networking references slapped in to make the actors more believable as teenagers. = -4pts 
• While the armless contortion monster from the first film (and Silent Hill 2!) does little but stagger about in Heather’s daytime hallucination, at least it’s something. = +4pts 
• Heather feels that she’s being followed by a molester and calls Sean Bean. Rather than tell her to call the police, he tells her not to come home. = -5pts 
• After happening upon an evil birthday party, complete with evil birthday clown, Heather gets an insider look of where McDonald’s meat comes from (spoiler: it’s people). = -11pts 
• The molester reveals himself to be Douglas, a private dick formerly working for the evil cult trying to bring Heather back to Silent Hill. He’s like totally trustworthy and stuff now, though, so Heather starts following him around. = +3pts (The innocence of youth.) 
• A monster that’s less something from Silent Hill and more a rejected Cenobite from Hellraiser suddenly appears and chops Douglas’s fingers off directly toward the camera. = +2pts in 3D, -6pts otherwise. Total = -4pts 
• Heather visibly annoys the mall janitor after she runs screaming from his supply closet and nearly overturns his mop bucket. = -3pts 
• This isn’t Winterfell, Jon Snow; why are you wearing so many jackets? = -7pts 
• Even after giving Heather his overcoat, Jon Snow is still wearing four layers of clothes. = -3pts 
• The crazy old man who giggles at the stuffed bunny that he pulls out of a box. = +5pts (It’s sad that this scene is one of the film’s highlights.) 
• Despite Heather’s house being splattered in blood (some of which is telling her to go to Silent Hill), Jon Snow questions her motives for wanting to bring a gun. = -9pts (You know nothing, Jon Snow!) 
• Heather and Jon Snow don’t save their game before they go on to the next level. = -3pts 
• When the police arrive and see the Silent Hill save point on the wall, the black cop asks the white cop if he thinks it’s a gang tag. = -6pts 
• Flashback scene where Sean Bean straight-up stabs a dude in the chest! = +9pts 
• On their way to Silent Hill, Heather reads from The Book of Boring Plot Exposition while Jon Snow tries not to fall asleep at the wheel. = -4pts 
• If you’re a high school couple looking to rent a motel room for the night, no questions asked, come on down to Jack’s Inn! Free HBO, wi-fi, and portals to the Otherworld! = +7pts 
• Plot twist! Jon Snow is a member of the spooky cult, complete with a save point etched into his chest! No wonder they didn’t need to save their game before they left. = -3pts 
• The Disc of Plot Significance needs to be blah blah blah blah blah. = -5pts 
• Reality sloughs away like melting flesh as the dingy motel crumbles into a rusted nightmare. = +10 pts 
• Heather makes her way to Silent Hill, or shall we call it what it actually is – a green screen stage with fog effects that look worse than the original movie made six years prior. = -6pts 
• If the filmmakers were going to give the viewers a sixty-second recap of the first movie, couldn’t they have just gone the traditional route and done it with bunnies? The movie already had bunnies, so it wouldn’t have been that far of a stretch. = -8pts 
• No matter how insipid the movie has been up until this point, hearing the air raid siren and watching the world crumble away into darkness made it all(most) worth it. = +15pts 
• We’ve seen haunted houses with more atmosphere than the scenes of Heather running around in, what, an apartment building we guess? = -8pts 
• A nude woman is flash-fried into a mannequin by an unseen force for no discernible reason other than to show three seconds of nips. = -3pts 
• In a scene that could have been truly terrifying if the room wasn’t as brightly lit as a Toys ‘R’ Us, a tremendously CGI-looking orgy of tangled mannequin parts and monstrous flesh clatters after Heather. = -20pts 
• Rather than shave off her eyebrows to appear as the albino cult leader Claudia, Carrie Anne-Moss instead opts to have the film’s make-up crew do a poor job of covering them up. = -7pts 
• Interjecting a twenty-second zombie fight into five minutes of Heather stumbling around in a hospital doesn’t make the film any more exciting. = -8pts 
• Malcom McDowell, you showed up too late to save this trainwreck with your crazy acting. = -4pts 
• Give the scary man chained up in a monster-filled insane asylum the Disc of Plot Significance – Y/N? = -5pts 
• Though the plot disc is called the Seal of Metatron, we’re pretty sure that Malcom McDowell called it the Seal of Megatron and refused to do another take. = +7pts 
• After stabbing himself in the chest with the blunt Seal of Megatron, Malcom McDowell becomes Malcom McSuperdowell and busts out of his cell. = +5pts 
• Heather effortlessly pulls the completed Plot Disc out from Monster McDowell’s chest, killing him instantly. = -6pts 
• Pyramid Head shows up long enough to dismember the grope-y inmates of the hell asylum with his Buster Sword. = +6pts 
• The gasmask-wearing henchmen who strap Jon Snow to a gurney and wheel him into a room full of stab-happy nurses act surprised when they get attacked and subsequently stabbed to death. = -5pts 
• After Heather sneaks into the stabby nurse room and creeps up to Jon Snow, rather than free him and escape she instead loudly asks him, “How can I find my dad?” = -8pts 
• The Otherworld economy is on the downturn, for even the mighty Pyramid Head moonlights as a carnie who turns the carousel. = -6pts 
• Heather experiences the bad touch on the merry-go-round with her evil twin sister-mom. = -4pts 
• Just when we’re glad to see Sean Bean reunited with Heather again, he ruins it by grunting, “You don’t touch her!” at the bad guys. = -3pts 
• Carrie-Anne Moss reveals her true form as the reject Cenobite and does battle with Pyramid Head. = +13pts 
• Realizing how easy it is to imagine the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers theme song during the boss battle. = -5pts 
• After killing Cenobite-Anne Moss, Pyramid Head strolls off like a boss. = +4pts (Mostly for letting us bust a rhyme for real.) 
• Sean Bean dropped his wallet somewhere in Silent Hill and decides to leave Heather in the care of a crazy ex-cultist while he goes off in search of it. Or maybe he’s looking for his dead wife? We wish that we cared. = -3pts 
• Cameo appearance by Travis Grady, the monster-punchin’ truck driver from Silent Hill: Origins, as the guy who thinks that it’s totally fine to pick up hitchhikers in Silent Hill. He even somehow nets middle billing in the credits. = +5pts 
• The movie ends with a nod to Silent Hill: Downpour simply so that people can point at the screen and say, “Hey, look! This is how Silent Hill: Downpour started!” = +3pts (Even ham-fisted fan service is better than nothing.) 
• The images of the mannequin fuck-spider battling the stabbity nurses that show throughout the credits. = +20pts (Despite being better than anything else that happened throughout the entire movie.)

Total Score = -94 pts
Available on Netflix and befouling the fond memories of Silent Hill 3 fans nationwide

Just as the game series has devolved from psychological horror to third-person combat action, so too did Silent Hill: Revelation follow up an atmospheric and gory film with a well-lit jump-scare-o-rama. Though it isn’t the worst movie inspired by a video game, the ruined potential certainly makes this a chore to watch. If you like strolling through a barely-passable haunted house with boring people, then Silent Hill: Revelation is the film for you. If you want an actually scary Silent Hill experience, dust off your PlayStation 2 and pick up Silent Hill 3.

True Blood Season 6, Episode 10

For two and a half months, Sean and I have formed a bond with the nanobots that few mortals and machines will ever comprehend. To make it through ten hours of pay-cable supernatural melodrama, we cried bitter tears, laughed to stave off madness, and whirred servos to keep the dust out of our vents. With the arduous process at an end, we present to you the final scorecard of this True Blood season. Praise be unto Billith!

• Sookie does one thing right this season: the insinuation of sharing her golden fairy parts with Alcide has rendered all of the douchebaggery from him. = +6pts 
• Alcide wearing a wig. = -5pts
• Violet introduces herself to Sookie with a steamy liplock, as is badass medieval Catholic tradition. = +3pts
• When Sookie rejects Warlow's offer to dance gaily around the maypole and requests that they just go steady, Warlow slaps Sookie right in her sass mouth. Nothing turns a face to a heel faster than maypole rejection. = +4pts
• HBO blowing its entire season budget on casting couch vampire orgy. = -3pts
• Vampires playing volleyball. = (In 1987, +10pts. In 2013, -14pts) -4pts
• Bill, sensing that Sookie is in trouble, forms the Justice League of Bon Temps to rescue her from Warlow's clutches in Magical Fairy Happy-Happy Land. = +6pts 
• Professor Takahashi's delightfully kawaii reaction to being glamoured and left in a forest with a fat stack of cash. = +7pts
• When Bill's attempts at a half-assed Kumbaya fail to take the Justice League into Happy-Happy Land, Violet succeeds with horrifying scare tactics. = +3pts
• Warlow vs. Bill! = +8pts
• Warlow vs. everyone who isn't Bill. = -4pts
• Rutger Hauer reappears from the Jizz Dimension just long enough to adhere to Warlow so that Jason can drive a stake through Handsome Ditch Vampire Fairy's handsome ditch chest. = +7pts (Deus ex jizz machina.)
• Oh... so I guess that's all it took to kill Warlow. No spirit bomb hadoken, no epic stand-off...  just a combo attack between a jizzy old fairy king and his hypersexed beefcake grandson. = -20pts
• It's a good thing that Warlow died at night so that the dissipation of his fairy blood magic didn't leave any nude sunbathing vampires stranded in the middle of the tundra with no means of escaping the light of day. Oh, wait... = -30pts
• HBO pays homage to The Scorecard nanobots (and America) by giving us a glimpse of the only dong audiences have wanted to see for 6 seasons. = +30pts
• Setting said dong on fire, thus cementing their obvious puritanical tendencies. = -35pts
• Bill's tell-all book is called... sigh... And God Bled. = -2pts
• Alcide not wearing a wig. = +10pts
• Jason Stackhouse is such a sexual panther that he can complete a rousing session of cunnilingus without so much as a droplet of ladydew left on his lips. = +3pts
• Using a church to give the townsfolk free hepatitis tests is just another Sunday afternoon in Louisiana. = +4pts
• Why wouldn't Sam, who showed no political aspirations whatsoever across the past five seasons, give his bar to Arlene so that he can be elected Mayor of Bon Temps? = -7pts
• If you're like us, watching the background church ladies refresh themselves with Christ's ever-watchful gaze imprinted on a hand fan made you want to go out and buy your very own. = +6pts
• Fact: Jason loves corn on the cob so fucking much. = +3pts
• Hippie Vampire's band sucks. = -4pts
• In a misguided attempt at begging for forgiveness, Tara's mom strips out of an outfit that we're confident was previously worn by Aunt Esther from Sanford and Son and then begs Tara to feed from her. She screams, with arms outstretched, "Let me nourish my baby girl!" When Tara bites her, the proceeding squelching sound sums up how we felt about watching that scene. = -15pts
• Season seven sneak peek: Attack of the zombie AIDs vampires! We're fucked. = -12pts

Total Score = -41pts
Season Score = -15pts

From the start, we knew that season six would be the worst one yet. When it wasn't boring, it was melodramatic. When it wasn't melodramatic, it was anticlimactic. When it wasn't any of the above, there wasn't any dong to spice things up. To top it all off, setting the tone of season seven as the start of a vampire apocalypse almost guarantees it to be like riding a rollercoaster with a bike seat jabbing you in the taint the entire time. Next summer, we'll be glad that we took our beta blockers. Deuces!

Score Technician: TJ Geise (Sean McConnell providing dong support.)

O.C and Stiggs

Asking why Robert Altman made O.C. And Stiggs is like asking why Altman made Popeye, or Fool for Love, or any other cash-grab coke-money project he ventured to produce in the ‘80s. It's a dangerous question, because it only leads to more and more absurd questions. For instance, is it self-indulgent? If so, how could Altman possibly take gratification in the end product unless the only thing that was blowing his skirt up those days was the anger of people who'd spent money to watch his films? Loosely based off dumb recurring characters from National Lampoon magazine, O.C. and Stiggs follows the misadventures of its titular characters, O.C. (Oliver Cromwell, though he insists it stands for "Out of Control!") and Stiggs.

At a certain point we’re going to stop relating anything that actually happened in the movie, as the nanobots have informed us that plot points after the first half of the movie will… upset them. Watch this movie if you've run out of reasons to dislike the abject and paltry drudgery of your life. Read this scorecard while you're doing it...

• Jane Curtain drinking out of a binocular flask while watching her insurance company-owning husband Paul Dooley's commercial about how much he dislikes drinkers. = +8pts 
• Sneaking into Curtain and Dooley's backyard while this is going down, mischief makers replace grilled lobsters with dog bones. Oh boy, is Paul Dooley gonna be PISSED! = +3pts 
• Oops! Flashback to a tropical credit sequence, a delightful frolic and surfing excursion to the sunny Gulf of Mexico. Kind of not really doing anything for us. = -4pts 
• NO WAY! They weren't surfing in the gulf at all, it was a fake surf pool in the middle of the frickin' Arizona desert! For completely subverting our sense of reality from the get-go. = +30pts 
• It's cool they got Vampire Weekend to do the soundtrack, er, wait, maybe that was King Sunny Ade and His African Beats? It's hard to tell. = +5pts 
• "Even with a name like Coletti we couldn't keep him out of the neighborhood." On the one hand, Paul Dooley's racism is definitely not a good thing. However, it's directed at Martin Mull . So we'll split the difference? = 0pts 
• Ooh, O.C. and Stigg's friend's mom is a hot school nurse that wears a ridiculous hot school nurse outfit, and she just offered to see one of them after school. If we know anything about National Lampoon this is going to be great. If we know anything about Robert Altman, this isn't going to go anywhere . = -20pts 
• Ducky from Pretty in Pink plays such a big ol' dork/Paul Dooley's kid. O.C. and Stiggs, dudes, We’re counting on you gu—yes! The old exploding water fountain trick. = +21pts 
• If your goal is to establish that O.C.'s grandfather is eccentric, devoting nearly 5 minutes of the film's runtime to going over his obsession with Huevos Rancheros is… definitely one way to do that. = -33pts 
• Somehow we made it out of the Huevos black hole and into the most amazing outfits ever. There's vests, shorts, ties, rainbow visors. Wow. This shit's amazing. = +8pts 
• And they're wearing them to go ride go-carts. = +100pts 

[It's right around here that the wheels start falling off. Things are making less and less sense, and—classic Altman—conversations are never allowed to finish.]

• Okay, so they bought an old AMC Rambler and put an extraordinary lift package and sublimely unpleasant horn and we still have no idea why Altman's filming this. = -10pts 
• Dennis Hopper reprising his role from Apocalypse Now, while completely blown out of his goddamn mind. = +34pts 
• Dennis Hopper not even trying to hide the fact that he doesn't have any of the dialogue memorized. = +4pts 
• O.C. and Stiggs are buying an UZI from Dennis Hopper, and he suggests they tell Paul Dooley's daughter to use it on a small dog. = -50pts 
• Props to Jane Curtain for always finding weird stuff to drink out of. = +12pts 
• Miranda from Sex and The City and O.C. are doing some tap-dance bullshit, and maybe if Altman could ever film a complete scene we'd find out what the hell he's trying to do, but no. Instead, he's got 8 other completely bullshit dumb scenes happening at the same time that he's decided it's totally cool to just randomly intercut. Quantity over sanity par excellence. = -60pts 
• Jesus, did he even rehearse a single scene? Really, were the actors even given copies of the script before they started filming this banana party? = -32pts 
• Bringing a machine gun to a wedding seems oddly appropriate in this movie. That's kind of an accomplishment, we guess…. = -21pts 
• Script Doctor: Stiggs' character getting a little boring here, Robert. Altman: Oh yeah? SD: Yeah… Let's give him some Steampunk goggles! Altman: Pay this man all our money! = +30pts 
• Melvin Van Peebles as a burnt-out wino? Master-stroke! = +5pts 
• Why?! = -10pts 
• Goddamnit, why? = -15pts 
• After their misguided jaunt to Mexico, one of them (We seriously can't remember which) gets Montezuma's Revenge, and we guess we're supposed to care or whatever. = +20pts 
• So the two cads grab some "sluts" (their words) that look like genies and head to some terrible restaurant. = -20pts 
• A truly inspirational speech from some jingoistic televangelist about how art's for fags and America is built on blood, sweat, and tears. = +25pts 
• Stumbling into Martin Mull's weird backyard sex party and he's got tiki drinks everywhere and a vanity license plate that says "cool." Awesome. = +100pts 
• Mull's character is a millionaire because of "hog couture." So he was like Talbott's or whatever. = -75pts 
• Okay, so there's a concert coming up for that band you both love. Why not dress up like Sheiks? = -10pts 
• Oh man, that King Sunny Ade concert footage is actually pretty good. If only Altman wouldn't cut away to something completely stupid every like 25 seconds… = -35pts 
• Oh, but grumply-grumple Schwab isn't happy at all with the Nigerian band and their pleasant tunes… = +25pts (Because of racism, natch.) 
• There's a scene where O.C. and Stiggs are wearing cut off football jerseys and walk into a restaurant with Bob Eubanks talking to no one at a table about how cool baseball is. Yeah, it really doesn't make any sense, but Bob Eubanks' choice of shirt is shrewd indeed. = +10pts 
• Somehow they break into Schwab's survival bunker and start… Just shooting fireworks. Jesus. My mouth is so dry right now. = -40pts 
• It's a firecracker fight to the finish. And Dennis Hopper just hopped (ha!) into a helicopter to go give those boys some support. = +25pts 
• Ugh. = -20pts 
• This is just getting rough. Like, it's not even worth writing about what's happening here. It's a garbled mess. =-30pts 

Total Score = -30pts
Available: Invite-Only Private Torrent Web-Sites run by sadists, Dollar Bin at one of the four video stores left that sell old sadist VHS tapes.

A lot of you are probably familiar with the feeling of frustration. Watching O.C. and Stiggs *is* frustration. Really, though, you get tiny glimpses of a scene that was probably very fun to make, and almost definitely would be worth watching if only you were allowed to watch the whole scene, and not just about 25 seconds before cutting to some other scene that's half over and doesn't make a lick of sense in context with the scene it's intercutting. Maybe this technique made sense in the ‘80s? It seems like a lot of things made sense in the ‘80s that maybe didn't *really* make any sense at all.

Score Technician: Paul Bower

True Blood Season 6, Episode 9

Well, it’s that time during the run of an HBO show when everything happens, thus setting us all up for the episode after when we ask ourselves, “What are we going to watch now?/Is this what getting out of prison feels like?” We’ll let you determine which applies to this situation.

Editor’s Note: Clearly we have started a trend/identified a systemic problem. Either way, you are welcome America, because clearly True Blood has heard our complaints.

• Eric the Vampire: A handy-man in more ways than one. = +6pts
• Having your black vampire best friend’s mother’s pastor/lover perform the services at the funeral of your other friend’s racist in-laws, which, we’re pretty sure, translated from the French, means Louisiana. = -10pts
• I’ll see your manual castration and raise you one Drive-like stomp to the face. = +6pts
• You know what’s exciting? Watching a vampire rip a sadistic doctor’s twig and berries off with his bare hand. You know what isn’t exciting? Being forced to watch a funeral for a 3rd tier character, including accompanying maudlin flashbacks, when you weren’t that upset he died in the first place. We would have preferred to just send a card. = -5pts
• Eric instantly pulling someone’s contacts out with his bare hand. The best slight-of-hand we’ve seen since he used the same hand to rip off that doctor’s junk five minutes ago. What can’t you do, Eric? = +3pts
• Lafayette, the best fry twerker in all of Louisiana. = +2pts
• Nothing helps an emotionally traumatized former Iraq vet more than a drinking problem. Thanks, Andy and Sam! You're the best! = -3pts
• Meaningless cuts to Alicde during Sookie’s “it’s all about me” eulogy, reminding us, yet again, that he is, in fact, a meaningless character. = -5pts
• Hey, Big John, we haven’t seen you since you lazily walked away from your shot and bleeding friend and didn’t call 911. Glad you could spare a few minutes to sing a song. = -4pts (While there is nothing overtly racist about this scene. It still felt racist. You can't argue with the complexity of the nanobots algorithms.)
• "I really don't see what the point of all that was." It’s not often that a racist old white lady says exactly what we're all thinking. = A wash (Because she is racist.)

Total Score = -10pts
Season Score = +26pts

So, dong mutilation aside, this was a very anti-climactic penultimate episode from a show that used to have fun with this kind of stuff. Terry’s funeral would have been laughable if it wasn’t such a killjoy full of clichés and manufactured “moments.” When you have to make-up flashback for a character, chances are he wasn't that important of a character anyway. At least we occasionally got glimpses of (some) characters walking from one location to the other in an effort to complete a task, even if those tasks seemed like sad attempts to out walking dead The Walking Dead. Only one episode remains. What will happen? Will Sookie—Nope, fuck it, we’re not even going there. We’re (almost) done.

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

Space Jam

As the first poster tacked upon our childhood walls, Space Jam was gold to a 10-year-old. But can it still carry its weight to the sophisticated technicians at The PCS? Michael Jordan takes a break from his life-altering switch from basketball to baseball and agrees to help the Looney Tunes win a game of hoops against the alien minions of Moron Mountain who are looking to enslave some ‘toons. Sounds like gold to us.

• Opening shot on moon: excellent cinematic foreshadowing. = +3pts
• R. Kelly inspirational song played over a child enjoying the innocence of youth! = -5pts (Pre-pedophile-charges, +5pts, Post-pedophile-charges. = -10pts)
• Kick-ass opening theme song that, like most ‘90s rap, we can all still sing/rap along with. = +10pts
• Bugs doesn’t get top billing?! = -5pts
• Danny DeVito voicing what is believed to be the precise equivalent of his alien self. = +5pts (Otherwise known as the first documented appearance of Frank Reynolds.) 
• Classic cigar-smoking villain. = +1pt
• Brain-fried hippie alien minion. = +2pts
• Bugs has mad respect due to his extensive vocabulary. He uses “diminutive” in his first scene. How great is this bunny? = +3pts
• Jordan’s acting. = -20pts (Before his years of theatrical study at the Hanes School of Commercial Acting.) 
• Ray Romano’s TV wife as annoyed patron sitting next to aliens in classic “raincoat” disguise at a Suns game. = +1pt
• Ray Romano’s TV wife making suggestively pervy comment about what is happening in said raincoat. = +2pts (In a kid’s movie. -5pts, In general. = +7pts)
• Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing losing their talent leads to some very impressive physicality in their acting. = +3pts
• Shameless McDonald’s product placement. = -5pts
• Hanes, Nike, Wheaties, Gatorade, and more McDonald’s product placement!  = -25pts
• Jordan being put up in a shithole motel, eating shithole fast food right before a game? We believe aliens and Looney Tunes, but a person can only be asked to suspend belief so far. . . = -2pts
• Daffy Duck fashion show. = +1pt
• MonSTARS? Looney Tune punning at its finest, friends. = +1pt
• Bugs can always stay cool under pressure. Respect. = +2pts
• Bill Murray. = +10pts
• Bill Murray back on a golf course. = +3pts
• Bill Murray’s umbrella hat. = +3pts
• Bill Murray’s shirt. = -5pts
• Jordan’s annoyance toward Wayne Knight’s character in  the high point of his acting performance.  = +1pt (Only 1-point good.)
• Everyone reacts quite coolly at Jordan being lassoed down the 9th hole of a suburban Chicago golf course. = -2pts (At this point in his "retirement" friend's would have probably resorted to anything to keep his gambling out of the paper. Intergalactic basketball match had to had been at the top of their list of dream distractions.)
• Birds circling Jordan’s (mostly likely concussed) head is a classic. BONUS: There are no concussions in Looney Tune Land! = +2pts  BONUS = +4pts
• Bugs and Jordan lip action. What we imagine was severely controversial at the time, we are happy to now consider more of a stance toward same sex/interracial/interspecies romance and less of a ploy for a cheap laugh. Looney Tunes: always at the frontier of society’s greatest struggles. But also, so funny to watch a cartoon kiss a real person. = +10pts
• Daffy Duck as a physician is terrifying. = -5pts
• We find it completely acceptable that Jordan remains calm and casually believes everything Bugs Bunny is telling him as he sits, unconcussed, in the middle of a cartoon world. And the only thing he appears to have an issue with is being asked to help in a basketball game when, hasn’t Bug heard? He’s a ballplayer now. = -10pts
• The magic of a Looney Tunes spit-shine. = +3pts
• Jordan, still stoic even when facing space monsters, finally shows a little emotion when he is reshaped into the form of a square-ish basketball and thrown around the court. At last, pathos! = +3pts
• Barkley getting schooled at basketball by a group of girls is supposed to be an ultimate burn. Rude. = -15pts (In 1996, +10pts, In 2013, -25pts) 
• Barkley getting schooled at basketball to the slow jam of Basketball Jones. Awesome. = +10pts
• Montage of players trying to figure out what happened to their talent is probably the best part of this entire film. MONTAGE HIGHLIGHT: Barkley, trying to make a deal with God, offers to never go out with Madonna again. = +10pts
• Yosemite Sam trying to play basketball by shooting his guns. ‘Cause it’s the only way he knows. = +2pts 
• Jordan’s complete lack of concern for his family’s possible concern over his disappearance. = -10pts
• Daffy Duck calling Earth “3D Land.” = +2pts
• No, no. we stand corrected. Bugs and Daffy breaking into Jordan’s house may be the best part of this film. = +10pts
• Bugs bad mouths Mickey Mouse. Poor sportsmanship, Bunny. = -1pt
• At last! Wayne Knight acknowledges that they are surrounded by cartoons! = +5pts
• I’m just so thankful that everyone had the time and resources to get team jerseys. Looney Tunes can clearly prioritize. = +2pts
• Disappointed, though, that they couldn’t think of a better name than Toon Squad. Especially with the MonSTARS to compete with. = -3pts
• No one cheered for Daffy. And it was hilarious. = +4pts
• Jordan tells the team to “just go out and have fun.” Go out and have fun, Jordan? Go out and have fun?? Were you not listening as you sat all chill-like after falling down the Looney hole, when Bugs explained the situation here? This is no time to “just” do anything but keep from becoming joke slaves at an alien amusement park for eternity. Because Toons don’t die, Jordan. If they lose this game, that’s eternal slavery. There’s no fun to have here. So how about you “just” go out and secure their freedom, eh?  = -10pts
• No, no. Maybe it’s actually the soundtrack that makes this movie great. = +15pts
• Alarming plug for steroids in the bottle of “Michael’s Secret Stuff.” Paired with some pretty severe peer pressure. = -10pts 
• Yosemite Sam and Elmer’s Pulp Fiction reference. = +10pts 
• The only time Jordan ever laughs, in this entire film, is at an alien getting pantsed. Come on, Michael. The world has more joy than this. = -5pts
• What I really do appreciate about this ball game is that the Toon Squad wins with their cleverness (of which they have plenty) and not their physical skill (of which they have none). Oh boy, can we relate! = +10pts
• A flattened Wayne Knight. You can never unsee that. = -5pts
• Bill Murray wearing a t-shirt under his jersey. = +5pts
• DeVito’s villain mistaking Bill Murray for Dan Akroyd. = +3pts
• Bill Murray seems to act with animated characters so much more strongly than Jordan. = No score, just an observation.
• After all that, Wayne Knight is still stressing about a baseball game. Whatever happened to perspective? = -5pts
• Jordan stepping off a spaceship to “I Believe I Can Fly.” Juuuuuust terrible. = -15pts
• No, I was right. The players who lost their talent are the best thing in this film. = +15pts

Total Score = +13pts
Available On: DVD, Amazon, and the $4 bin at Best Buy.

All in all, we could still dig it. Sure, Bugs had to carry the dead-weight that was Michael’s Jordan’s acting, but he carried it with the uninhibited ease of a professional cartoon who can’t feel strain. And on top of all that, the soundtrack rocked, the cameos were satisfying, and we’d be lying if we said it wasn’t kind of nice to see some good ol’ fashion violence back in my cartoons again. And of course we can’t forget the joyful nostalgia of a classic catchphrase!

• Bugs Bunny said “wabbit,” “Doc,” and/or ate a carrot ten times.  = +10pts
• Daffy Duck said his classic “Oh brother” three times.  = +3pts
• “Suffering succotash” by Sylvester twice.  = +2pts
• Tweety taught he taw something once. = +1pt
• Porky Pig stuttered so much on a word that he changed words completely a total of three times.  = +3pts
• But not a single “That’s All, Folks!.”  = -10pts

Revised Total Score: +22pts

Score Technician: Kalah Mazac

True Blood Season 6, Episode 8

Episode eight of True Blood could have been entitled “Ten Pounds of Shit in a Five Pound Bag” and HBO still would have hyped it up to be the most provocative episode yet.

• Eric sarcastically mocking Bill’s new Godlike powers while Bill levitates Eric around the room, thus attempting to use said powers in a desperate ploy to prove to himself that he is as cool as Eric. = +4pts (To Eric, for voicing what we are all thinking.) 
• Bill and Eric’s catfight ends with a lot of butthurt, but not the kind to end their pent up man-tension. = -2pts 
• Alcide proves that he is King of the Douchebags by beating not one, but three women. = -7pts 
• Tara says “fuck” three times in the same sentence. Who in the fuck fucking talks like that anyway, for fuck’s sake? = -3pts 
• Jason’s fantasy of being a prison bitch in an all-female penitentiary likely didn’t have room for a vampire who believes in “badass medieval times Catholicism.” = +4pts (Joe’s fantasy, however...) 
• We get it Warlow. You loved Sookie for longer than Jesus loved the little children. This constant reminder doesn’t make you any more interesting. = -6pts 
• What’s it like to get it on with a shifty-eyed psychiatrist? “Oozy, but productive.” = +3pts (Way to take one for the team, Pam!) 
• Steve Newlin’s brand of “last kid picked for kickball” pathetic endearment works on Hippie Vampire and saves him from death by tainted blood. = +2pts 
• Hippie vampire saving Steve Newlin. = -4pts 
• If werewolves and shapeshifters can keenly sniff out a day-old fetus, shouldn’t Sam have smelled Nicole’s ovulation and just suited up? If the man can find a pair of pants in a swamp, he could have scrounged up a banana-flavored Durex. = -10pts 
• It’s refreshing to see that Bill cares just as much about Sookie and Warlow as the audience (i.e., he couldn’t care less). = +5pts 
• If we believed for a moment that the writers of the show were clever enough to make Steve Newlin a metafictional incarnation of the audience, this episode would be the time. Parallels can be drawn between his torment on the show and ours in watching, but nothing so black-and-white as him being tortured on a hamster wheel in one scene and shown violently weeping in the next. It’s like he feels our pain too well. Or maybe we’re just delusional from going on eight hours of a pay-cable vampire soap opera? = No points, just pointing it out. 
• Since when is “silver fox” a term of derision? If anything, we feel that Nicole’s mom wants to get herself a mouthful of vanilla extract. = -3pts 
• That Andy hasn’t shot Arlene by now shows his remarkable strength of character. Or that he’s a really bad shot.= +7pts 
• Being angry with your dead parents for trying to kill you is a terrible reason to become a vampire fairy empress. = -8pts 
• The catfight between Tru Blood “spokesbitch” Ms. Suzuki and Sarah Newlin is somewhere between “batshit insane” and “totally bananas.” = +25pts 
• Sarah Newlin’s victory quote. = -15pts 
• Eric showing his tenderness by expressing remorse at ripping away a teenage boy’s first non-Internet memory of boobies. = +3pts

Total Score = -5pts
Season Score = +36pts

Suzuki vs. Newlin aside, this episode is little more than filler until the big finale when Sookie hadokens her spirit bomb at whomever is revealed to be the big bad. Will it be Bill, Warlow, Frieza, Niall, Tara, M. Bison, or Sarah Newlin? A better question is, do we even care?

Score Technician: T. J. Geise

White Zombie

Coming out at a time when people still identified movies with sound as “talkies,” White Zombie bears a number of distinctions: for being one of the earliest pre-Romero zombie films (if not the first), for being Bela Lugosi’s most recognizable role (behind Dracula, of course), and most significantly to us, the inspiration behind one of the greatest metal bands of all time. But does this octogenarian shocker still have anything to say to a generation that’s seen zombies co-starring with Brad Pitt and rubbing elbows with Don Draper on America’s premier basic cable network? Thankfully for all of us, we have the Scorecard’s nanobots to let us know.

• For giving a name to the band that defined this technician’s teen years. = +25pts 
• If the theme for the opening credits is any indication, this movie is going to be pretty racist. = -15pts 
• It’s only fitting that the protagonists of a horror movie set in Haiti should be the two whitest people on the face of the earth. = -10pts 
• GAAAAH! Disembodied Bela Lugosi eyes! = +28pts 
• Ironically, casting a voodoo spell that transforms a woman into a zombie is not the creepiest thing that Bela Lugosi can do with the scarf he stole from her. = -3pts 
• Mr. Beaumont’s Haitian plantation seems to be the one place in the ‘30s where you weren’t allowed to smoke. = +2pts 
• Protip: If a wealthy plantation owner offers to host your wedding on his palatial estate in Haiti, maybe think twice before you take him up on it. Also, what the hell are you doing in Haiti? = -4pts 
• A conversation between Harold McLernon (editor) and Victor Halperin (director):
  MCLERNON: So, this scene between Beaumont and his butler, where Beaumont alludes to his shady motives surrounding the young couple—how important would you say that is?
  HALPERIN: Well, it establishes a sense of mystery about the character and feeds the audience’s…
  MCLERNON: Oh. ‘Cause I just kind of cut away from it somewhere in the middle of the scene.
  HALPERIN: …Okay. So how much would you say got…?
  MCLERNON: And the next scene was boring, so I cut us in somewhere in the middle of that, too.
  HALPERIN: The next scene? You mean the one where Beaumont and the young couple meet for the first time and…
  MCLERNON: Yeah, I wasn’t really feeling any of that. “Blah, blah, blah,” just cut to the chase, am I right?
  HALPERIN: But you dropped us into the scene literally while Beaumont was mid-sentence. The audience is going to have no idea what the hell they were talking about.
  MCLERNON: Whatever. We’ll fix it in post.
  HALPERIN: THIS IS POST!
  MCLERNON: Man, are you going to be this much of a prima donna about everything? = -10pts 
• The main product of Bela Lugosi’s zombie-run mill appears to be fart noises. = +6pts 
• To the film’s credit, the black zombies appear to be played by actual black people. = +15pts 
• The same can’t be said for the Asian zombies. = -15pts 
• If Beaumont and Bela Lugosi are literally the only two living bodies in the mill, why does Bela need to whisper his plan into Beaumont’s ear? = -3pts 
• I prefer to believe that Bela Lugosi’s conversations in real life were marked by just as many abrupt pauses and baleful glares as the ones he has in his films. = +23pts 
• You can call that stuff a zombie potion or whatever, but today we know that Bela just slipped Beaumont a vial of liquid roofies. = -8pts 
• Every girl’s dream wedding reception consists of her and her husband sitting in an empty banquet hall with her husband’s lecherous boss, right? = -3pts 
• Madeline sees Bela Lugosi’s face in the bottom of her glass before collapsing into a heap on the floor. Coincidentally, that’s also how we at the PCS know when we’ve had enough for the night. = +9pts 
• The bar scene is a pretty great example of post-silent era cinematography. = +30pts 
• Dr. Bruner, the minister who married Neil and Madeline is also an expert on zombies. Also, as a side note, this is only the second Bela Lugosi film that I’ve seen, but yet again his nemesis is an elderly academic. Was that in his contract or something? = -2pts 
• This line: “Surely you don’t think she’s alive? In the hands of natives? Oh, no, better dead than that.” = -20pts (For making us feel like there may have been an N-word cut in post for this scene.) 
• Did the filmmakers think that the audience wouldn’t notice that suddenly Neil and Dr. Bruner are standing in front of Bruner’s desk? = -11pts 
• So, Bela Lugosi’s zombies aren’t so much an undead horde brought back to life through arcane magic, as much as hapless slaves kept in thrall through a combination of drugs and hypnosis. = No score, just figured the rest of this would make more sense if you knew that. 
• For giving us the White Zombie drinking game: every time Bela Lugosi stares directly into the camera, take a drink. = +10pts 
• A song for Beaumont: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSih4o2YfmA = +8pts
• And, at last, we have our first white dude in black face. We guess you just couldn’t trust an important role like “witch doctor” to one of those colored folks. = -30pts 
• Bela Lugosi orders Madeline to stab her own husband as he lay unconscious. That’s some cold-blooded shit, B.L. = +6pts 
• Apparently shooting ineffectually at the ground is not the way to kill a zombie. These were pre-Romero years, so we were all still groping in the dark on this one. = +3pts 
• It was pretty well established in a previous scene that zombies are just living people suffering from mind control. So are we supposed to be cool with Bela Lugosi’s entire zombie horde throwing itself off a cliff, just because the pretty white girl survived? = +5pts (Yeah, we’re actually pretty cool with that.) 
• Bela Lugosi’s most arcane voodoo secret was how he turned himself into a mannequin before landing on those rocks in the water below. = -2pts 

Total Score = +33pts
Available on: Netflix Streaming, budget video bins (seriously)

White Zombie is nothing if not a product of its times. While it benefits from the (recently ended) silent era’s tradition of striking visuals, it also has to contend with the other baggage of early ‘30s: over-emotive silent film actors struggling to find the right pitch in the talkies, a ludicrously exoticized vision of Haiti, and white people playing roles that were meant for non-white people. At a quick and dirty 65 minutes, it’s definitely not the worst piece of zombie-related entertainment you could spend your time on (Warm Bodies? Gross), but not exactly a demonoid phenomenon either.

Score Technician: Joe Hemmerling

True Blood Season 6, Episodes 6 & 7

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.