Thursday, April 24, 2014

Game of Thrones Season 4, Episode 3

On last week's episode of Game of Thrones: (redacted due to spoilers). The only thing to figure out now is how the nanobots would score (redacted due to spoilers). Apparently, it's all (redacted due to spoilers). So let's get to it!
  • Joffery is really dead. Seriously. Process that. = +20pts (For definitively eliminating the chance of the doppelganger gambit, made popular on our other favorite serialized soap opera, Days of Our Lives.)
  • Getting in a rickety boat with a man everybody calls "the fool." = -3pts
  • Hey, Tommy Carcetti, are you allowed to change your accent mid-series? = +2pts
  • How many inbred Lannisters are there? Call us skeptics, but we wouldn't be surprised if they were keeping an Arseface on ice, deep in a dungeon somewhere for when they get really desperate. = -2pts
  • Tywin Lannister dropping knowledge. = +8pts
  • Raping your sister next to the cold dead body of her psychopathic son, who also happens to be wearing stones with eyes painted on them. = -50pts
  • Nothing says "you can trust me with the safety of your daughter, land, and silver" than a man with a half melted face and a beard full of rabbit stew. = +2pts
  • Call us crazy, but is there any better sign of a good time than a condom being rinsed in a dirty mop-bucket? Just like grandma used to make! = +7pts
  • Offering a seat to your guest. = +3pts
  • That seat being a jizz-riddled brothel comforter. = -2pts
  • "Categorically." = +10pts
  • Apparently, the only thing you can't smuggle into a Westeros prison is...nothing. There is literally nothing you can't smuggle into a prison in Westeros. = +3pts
  • Aw! Dad and son look so happy!...Wait!? What is happening?! Damn you, Cannibals! You're the worst! = -5pts
  • Cannibals are the Hennimore!'s of Westeros. = -3pts
  • It's official: John Mormont has read every Lonely Planet about "The World" ever published. No person is better at pointing to a bizarre new cultural ritual and telling you exactly it's meaning and intent without error. Get this man a Fullbright! = +4pts
  • Dong! = +7pts
  • For the people of Mereen, their love of dong is apparently only outweighed by their joy for the urine that flows out of it. = 0pts (A wash.)
  • Dejected reaction of Mereen citizen to Kahleesi's champion's victorious urine spray looked a lot like this, which is another way of saying it was almost priceless. = +10pts
Episode Score: +11pts
Season Score: +161pts

Leave it to an uncomfortable rape scene to drain the score of an otherwise stay-the-course-kind-of-episode. By moving a major plot point to the beginning of the season, Game of Thrones, found itself in the bizarre position of having to set the table for the season...again. While we applaud the showrunners for their bold decisions last episode, it clearly put them in the bind that is fallout mode. Still, anytime Tywin Lannister is on the screen we know it's in our best interests to pay attention. That man is stone cold, yo.

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Mac and Me


In Mac and Me, the 1988 McDonald’s produced movie that definitely does not rip-off E.T., a family of MACs (Mysterious Alien Creatures) with serious blood sugar issues get sucked into a NASA space probe and dragged back to Earth. Being able to make electronic items and other random things explode, they aren’t held captive for long, and the littlest MAC, let’s call him Mac, finds refuge with some kid, let’s call him Eric, and his completely-different-from-the-family-in-E.T. family.
Scores:
  • This movie bears absolutely no relation to E.T., and it is purely coincidental that the title fonts resemble the fonts you might find on a bag of Reese’s Pieces. = +2pts
  • What do we do on Mars? Oh, you know, wander aimlessly around the desert, suck shit out of holes in the ground with all these straws we happen to have. You know, that kind of thing. = -7pts
  • Why did these aliens who resemble geriatric famine victims with no motor control fail to win America’s hearts? = -17pts
  • Getting sprayed with a fire extinguisher full of shaving cream. = +3pts
  • Ok, the joke about California being full of suburban, middle class white kids pretending to commune with the Great Earth Spirit is actually pretty accurate. = +5pts
  • In E.T., the first person to see the alien was the little sister of a kid named Eliot, but in Mac and Me, the first person to see the alien is the little girl next door who’s not related at all to the kid in this movie, named Eric, so this film absolutely does not constitute any sort of copyright infringement. = +12pts
  • Doo dee doo, just eatin’ a bag of Skittles in my wheelchair…nothin’ to see here, just this giant bag of deliciously endorsable Skittles… = -7pts
  • It’s fitting that Eric watches the Snorks on T.V., because the Snorks were also absolutely not a rip-off of any other show, like the Smurfs. = +3pts
  • This scene . = +53 pts
  • We’re pretty sure that “Schizofreakia” was the name of an early ‘80s Rick James album. = +8pts
  • In a strategy that is in no way similar to Eliot’s leaving a trail of Reese’s Pieces to attract E.T., Eric leaves a trail of…soda straws? = +7pts
  • Hey, everybody! In the middle of an emotionally and physically traumatic fight involving a vacuum cleaner, I just coined a term: MAC. You know, for Mysterious Alien Creature? Can everybody please use this term for the rest of the movie so that it catches on? Hello? Everybody? ....hello? = -25pts
  • Hey, everyone in the neighborhood! All of our dogs chased a Martian down the street and ran him up a tree and won’t let him go, and now there’s a horrible ‘80s ballad blaring all over the place. Is this the apocalypse? Does anyone care? Hello? Anyone? …hello? = -25pts
  • Mac doesn’t look so good – let’s keep him on his strict diet of high fructose corn syrup. = -17pts
  • Government agent who is hunting for MACs: Whaddya think? Should we follow the people with the giant moving teddy bear making bleep blorp sounds? = -5pts
  • Ronald McDonald is the least surreal element in this classic scene  involving break dancing, football players (also break dancing), and an alien in a teddy bear outfit, break dancing. = +75pts
  • Yet another out-of-control wheelchair scene, and the only available clip of it on YouTube has been dubbed over with the Benny Hill Theme . = +2pts
  • Thank God, they’ve finally put a shirt on Mac. = +10pts
  • The whole Mac family doesn’t look so good, either. Corn syrup, stat! = -7pts
  • While playing Simon Says with the Mac family, the kids accidentally start an interplanetary war by signing insinuations that Mrs. Mac commits brbleplzr with a soda straw under the Great Zygrschisx.  = -13pts
  • The scene where the Mac family wanders into a grocery store seems prescient in the age of peopleofwalmart.com. = -5pts
  • We’re not sure why it was important to have made the Macs American citizens instead of, you know, putting them on a rocket back to their home planet, but we are fans of how they’ve been forced to wear clothes. = +12pts
Total Score: +64 pts
Available on: YouTube

References are vague, and sources disreputable, but it’s probable that Mac and Me contains the very first instance of the now classic cinematic technique of break dancing at McDonald’s. Prior to 1988, the technique had been used in cruder forms, and with limited success, most notably in Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse’s can-can at Mickey D’s in An American in Paris, and in Gone with the Wind’s cotillion at McDonald’s, which was ultimately cut from the film after test audiences rioted. Post -1988, the McDonald’s break dance became a staple of great filmmaking, lending poignancy and flare to such moments as the Confederate vs. Union dance-off in Glory, the tragic conclusion of Herzog’s Grizzly Man, and most recently, in the stirring climax of 47 Ronin, delivering a damning statement on the debilitating societal effects of the capitalization of milkshakes and dance. Even the allusion to milkshakes in There will be Blood was director P.T. Anderson’s veiled attempt to incorporate the spirit of McDonald’s and break dancing into his film, but audiences failed to respond to the subtle reference, and critics were non-plussed by what they regarded as Anderson’s contempt for tradition. Ironically, the break dance scene had been included in There will be Blood’s script from the beginning, but mid-way through filming, star Daniel Day Lewis severely strained his latissimus dorsi, making it impossible for him to do the worm. In later interviews, Lewis stated, “The chance to do a McDonald’s break dance was my sole reason for doing the film. After my injury, I was devastated, and my performance reflects the pale shadow of a man that I had become. Fortunately, I received a call from Spielberg, and was soon able to pop and lock my way through Lincoln.” In conclusion, while Mac and Me, like many Merchant Ivory productions, has long been criticized for being visually lush yet emotionally empty, there is no denying its lasting influence on cinema. To paraphrase Mr. Lewis’ final statement on the subject, “I sought the dance of Mac and Me, but ere I danced, the dance chose me.”

Score Technician: Alex Pearlstein

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Game of Thrones Season 4, Episode 2


Knowing now that Jaime and Jon Snow are both home safe, The Hound is still a badass, and Daenerys still has more guys orbiting around her friend zone than Jupiter has moons, curiosity has built about what's going down with Bran (and, more importantly, Hodor), Stannis, and Theon (oh, sorry... Reek). The second episode of a season will almost certainly give us a view of the characters neglected in the first episode, but Game of Thrones has yet to succumb to the “fillersode” demands of lesser shows. Will tonight be any different? The nanobots will scrobble us an answer.

  • Twitching along behind your kidnapper while he hunts humans in the wilderness takes Stockholm Syndrome to unsettling new heights. = -4pts
  • “Your new hand is nicer.” Leave it to Tyrion to always know the right words to say to his brother. = +6pts
  • Clandestine swordfighting lessons in Bronn's Secret Dock of Adultery. = +8pts
  • You know you're a sicko when your dad, home from his trip spent stabbing wedding-goers, thinks your turning a man into a dickless butt-puppet was messed-the-hell-up. = -5pts
  • Joffrey is nice just long enough to get everyone's hopes up before he slashes a book in half and (sexually) muses about Ned Stark's execution. = -10pts
  • Not looking your whore in the eyes when you tell her to piss off. = -4pts
  • Stannis makes it clear that he gives zero fucks about his brother-in-law being burned at the stake for...not setting the table or something. = +7pts
  • Given that we've watched three seasons of Game of Thrones, it's hard to disagree with Melisandre's view of Westeros being The One True Hell. = +3pts
  • Hodor-deer! = +4pts
  • Talking to Bran Stark about his warging abuse sounds like an after school about the dangers of huffing glue...or masturbating. = -3pts
  • Peter Dinklage relives his 2012 Golden Globe reaction during Joffrey and Margaery's wedding. = +6pts
  • Joffrey lets his wedding band play just long enough for you to think, “Is that Sigur Ros?” before he whips coins at them. = +5pts
  • Sigur Ros taking the money and running. = -1pt (Despite their elegiac sound, we thought they were made of sterner stuff.)
  • This wedding has more scathing rejoinders than a rap battle between Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill. = +12pts
  • Announcing that a royal wedding isn't a source of amusement scant moments before making little people fight. = +3pts
  • Insinuating dwarf rape. = -4pts
  • Pausing the episode to stare into Joffrey's cold, dead, blood-filled eyes. = +100pts

Episode Score: +123pts
Season Score: +150pts

While last's seasons Red Wedding left fans wiping away tears on the sleeves of their House Stark t-shirts, this season's Purple Wedding has fans high-fiving so hard that io9 ran an article for The 50 Greatest Tweets About Last Night's Game of Thrones.

Though the second episode may be a triumph in the short term, Tyrion is in hot water, Tywin's going to start calling the shots, and Cersei will be even more unbearable for the rest of the show. We can practically hear her now, caterwauling and not having sex with her brother.

Score Technician: T. J. Geise

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

New Jack City


Before he was one of the biggest names in the ‘90s action films—before Blade, before Demolition Man, before Passenger 57—Wesley Snipes made a name for himself as the ruthless leader of the Cash Money Brothers in Mario Van Peebles’s New Jack City. A “period piece” that chronicled the rise of crack cocaine in the late ‘80s, NJC attempted to shine a light on the impact of the drug war on America’s inner cities, while also shining a light on just how epically baller the lifestyle of a drug kingpin really is. Throw in Ice-T (who around this time was better known for writing songs about killing cops than for playing them in shitty police procedurals) as the detective bent on bringing Snipes to justice, and you’ve got a movie that’s just begging for a deep-scoring.
  • Opening your movie with a song named after your movie. = +13pts 
  • New Jack City hit theaters in 1991, but was set in the late 1980s. It’s basically a period piece in the same way that The Big Lebowski was. = -3pts 
  • Wesley Snipes drops a deadbeat he was dangling over the rail of a bridge, quipping “See ya, and I wouldn’t wanna be ya.” For displaying all the sharp-witted verbal acumen of a 4th grader. = -6pts 
  • Ice-T getting jacked by a baby-faced Chris Rock. = +21pts 
  • After a lengthy, grueling foot-chase, Ice shoots Chris Rock in the ankle in the middle of a school yard. That’s standard police procedure, right? = -4pts 
  • Club emcee duties courtesy of Flavor Flav. = +10pts 
  • …back when Flavor Flav was better known for rapping alongside Chuck D than for plowing Sylvester Stallone’s ex-wife. = +12pts 
  • Bling. = +6pts 
  • “Damn. Crack.” = +17pts 
  • Times were tough for all-male a capella groups in the 1980s, and many were forced to live as transients. = +3pts 
  • Is Ice wearing eyeliner? = -5pts 
  • It totally figures that John Bender would grow up to be a cop. = +7pts 
  • Detective John Bender discharges his firearm in Ice’s apartment… in front of their superior officer. That’s standard police procedure, right? = -8pts 
  • The Cash Money Brothers take over The Carter, an apartment complex in the inner city, and convert it into their drug empire’s stronghold. For setting up a stunning The Raid-esque conclusion. = +25pts 
  • Wesley Snipes’s offer of fresh fruit to his Mafia connec. = -3pts 
  • Upon being informed that the Cash Money Brothers are cutting them out of the drug trade by dealing directly with the Peruvians, Don Armeteo’s reaction is essentially “They’ll come back around.” = -10pts 
  • Ice-T encounters Chris Rock again, this time beating up on his girlfriend in a fit of crack-induced rage. Ice does the logical thing and puts the man in rehab and invests all of his time into personally overseeing his recovery. = -12pts (Seriously, when exactly does Ice-T fight crime?) 
  • ‘90s fashion alert: Red double-breasted suit. = +5pts
  • Mafia goons show up on Wesley Snipes’s home turf with a peace offering of a lawn jockey with a noose around its neck. Not surprisingly, this gift draws the ire of their host. We’re not really sure what the mafia’s endgame was in this gambit. = -11pts 
  • The use of Scarface footage as foreshadowing of a gangster’s inevitable fall from power beats season 5 of Breaking Bad to the punch by about 22 years. = +6pts 
  • That lady seducing Wesley Snipes away from his girlfriend has some serious shoulders. = +6pts 
  • Detective John Bender prepares Chris Rock to go undercover and infiltrate the CMB’s operation in The Carter by telling him he’s totally unprepared to do it and will probably die. That’s standard police procedure, right? = -16pts 
  • Why the hell is Detective Stone wearing a baby in this scene? = -14pts
  • In The Carter, Wesley Snipes has all the people cutting and packaging his crack work naked, which is a totally legitimate way to keep people from stealing your product, and not an excuse to shoehorn some gratuitous T&A into the movie. = -3pts 
  • Chris Rock, who has moved up the ranks of the CMB’s drug empire to become a supervisor over crack production within The Carter, relapses in the most spectacular way imaginable and blows his cover. = +13pts 
  • The police storm The Carter in order to retrieve their asset, wearing their police-issue ski masks. Hopefully Ice is still carrying his police-issue trench spike from earlier in the film. = +7pts 
  • The Carter has been built up as this impenetrable fortress filled with tenants who act as live-in hostages. How the hell is this raid NOT the action centerpiece of the movie? = -25pts 
  • Wesley Snipes gathers the top-ranking members of his organization to berate them over the loss of The Carter. It’s worth pointing out that women are better represented in the leadership of the Cash Money Brothers than in corporate America today. = +10pts 
  • Wesley Snipes to his partner, Gee Money: “Sit your five-dollar ass down before I make change.” = +25pts 
  • At Chris Rock’s funeral, we learn that the case against Wesley Snipes has fallen apart because the police did not have enough evidence to make any arrests, this despite the fact that, before he died, Chris Rock managed to get video footage of some of the highest-ranking members of the CMB hiring him to perform illegal activities. Did someone record over those tapes with reruns of Small Wonder? = -32pts 
  • Ice-T and Detective John Bender decide to take matters into their own hands and go undercover as drug dealers in order to bring Wesley Snipes down. Because, while arresting Snipes’ lieutenants for their confessed crimes and striking a deal with them to turn state’s evidence is clearly impossible in New Jack City’s vision of America, evidence gathered through illegal, off-book police activity will totally hold up in court. = -19pts 
  • ‘90s tech alert: Gee Money’s see-through corded plastic phone. = +5pts 
  • Wesley Snipes tells Ice-T about how he had to murder a school teacher (in the the pale moonlight) as part of his gang initiation. In completely unrelated news, Ice-T’s mother was a school teacher whose murder has gone, to this point, completely unsolved. = -11pts 
  • Ice-T saves Wesley Snipes from an outraged, pistol-packing citizen, which A) Helps him to win the trust of the wary drug lord, and B) Shows that Wesley Snipes has pretty crap security if some old dude with a gun can get within five feet of him. = -8pts 
  • ‘90s tech alert: The 3.5” floppies that Detective John Bender steals out of Wesley Snipes’ safe. = +10pts 
  • “Hey, baby, you still mad at me? Well fuck you then.” = +15pts 
  • Ambushed by mafia hitmen at a wedding, Wesley Snipes uses a flower girl as a human shield. = +13pts 
  • Ice-T’s carefully laid sting turns into a bloodbath when one of Wesley Snipes’ henchmen recognizes Ice as the cop who shot Pookie in that school yard. Who would think that shooting a guy in front of a bunch of kids could have unforeseen adverse consequences down the line? = +2pts 
  • Wesley Snipes tearfully murdering his erstwhile best friend-turned-betrayer, Gee Money, beats Season 3 of The Wire to the punch by a good 13 years. = +12pts 
  • Ice-T, after emerging victorious from the climactic fist fight with Wesley Snipes: “I want to shoot you so bad, my dick’s hard.” = +22pts 
  • During an impassioned speech to the court room, in which he frames his confederate Kareem as the leader of the CMB, Wesley Snipes attempts to remind us all that this movie is about America, and stuff. = -14pts 
  • Wesley Snipes turns state’s evidence in exchange for a one-year prison sentence, but in a stroke of shocking irony, he is gunned down by the old dude who tried to kill him earlier in the movie. If there’s a lesson to be learned from all this, it’s that police work is bullshit, and the only way to make meaningful change in the world is to take the law into your own hands. = -34pts 
  • But this song was in the movie. = +13pts
Total Score = +20pts
Available on: Netflix DVD

Part gangster film, part exploitation film, with just a little bit of musical thrown in for S&Gs, New Jack City is a movie that wants to revel in the greed and violence of its anti-hero while also delivering a stern message to society about the horrors of the drug war. It’s kind of funny; Ice-T was allegedly reluctant to accept this role due to his antipathy towards cops, and in many ways, the character he plays is the very embodiment of the kind of brutal police thug that Ice decried in his music (he shoots a fleeing, nonviolent offender in the ankle!!!). Still, the abundance of flamboyant ‘90s fashion and hilariously street-tough dialogue makes this film a gem worth checking out, especially with a Scorecard in hand.

Score Technician: Joe Hemmerling

Friday, April 11, 2014

Ssssss


From the producers of Jaws and Deep Impact and the director of a bunch of Jake and the Fatman episodes comes Ssssss! Starring a pre-Starbuck/Face Dirk Bendict and your grandpa's favorite character actor Strother Martin, this snoozy, slithery sci-fi schlockfest showcases a seemingly sinister scientist (surname Stoner) studying snakes or something.

Though Sssssss lost the 1973 Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film, it won the hearts of herpetology scholars everywhere for giving '70s American something new to giggle at (hee-hee... herpe-tology).

Is this film too venomous for the nanobots' delicate constitutions? If it is, this score technician certainly isn't looking forward to popping a handful of tiny robots into his mouth as if they were aluminum-flavored Jolly Rangers in order to suck poison out. As this film will teach us, however, we do what we must in the name of science!
  • Including a disclaimer stating how badass all of the cast and crew had to have been to work around live, murderous snakes. = +4pts 
  • Opening the film with grunty sex noises that turn out to be coming from two old guys hauling a crate out of a cellar. = -9pts 
  • You don't have to tell time like a wild west gunfighter just to impress Strother Martin, other old guy. He obviously likes you, otherwise he wouldn't be selling you his failed experiment (which seems to be a sexy groan monster). = -2pts 
  • The love child of Walter Matthau and Richard Nixon tells lame snake jokes and pervs on young co-eds before reaffirming to Dr. Stoner that nobody cares about his dumb experiments because they're dumb. = -3pts 
  • Because of reasons, Starbuck becomes Dr. Stoner's lab assistant. He's immediately thrust into the doctor's madness by watching him give his python Kentucky bourbon. = +5pts 
  • Pro-tip: Don't squirt gasoline on Starbuck's crotch if you're afraid of snakes. = +3pts 
  • Love interest alert: Dr. Stoner's nerdy daughter has big hair, big glasses, big... no, that's pretty much it. = -4pts 
  • Referring to snakes as a minority group. = -15pts (For spitting poisonous venom into the eyes of the civil rights movement.) 
  • When your superior essentially asks,“Wanna watch me agitate the hell out of a horrifyingly poisonous snake before I pump chicken blood down its throat?” = -5pts 
  • Chekov's mongoose. = +4pts 
  • Introducing a majestic king cobra... = +6pts 
  • ...and then shoving a noisy mongoose into its face. = +3pts (lol, mongoose noises!) 
  • Starbuck is too sleepy to help with the dishes. We've all been there, dude, but you're a guest; get off your duff and scrub some plates! = -4pts 
  • Explaining that cobra venom is nature's strongest hallucinogen after you've injected a syringeful into your lab assistant. = +6 pts (For sheer dickery.) 
  • Karate chopping at a king cobra for tips. = +3pts 
  • Dr. Stoner is bitten by a black mamba and shrugs it off like it ain't no thang. = +5pts (You can't poison brass balls!) 
  • Watching Starbuck shed his skin makes us want to squirt glue on our hands and then peel it off because THAT IS SO FUN. = +3pts 
  • Trying to pick up chicks at a mad scientist's house. = -2pts 
  • The shocking reveal isn't that Dr. Stoner's former lab assistant is missing, but that he's none other than Tim McGraw! = +6pts (One for each amazing ab.) 
  • Cobra montage! = +7pts 
  • What could have been a sultry “Skinny dippin' with Starbuck” interlude was thwarted by strategically superimposed foliage. = -4pts 
  • Suddenly, a carnival. = +3pts 
  • Covering a Vietnam war triple amputee in green scales and then asking him to squirm around as a sideshow attraction. Work is work, though, right? = -7pts 
  • Giving a girl a stuffed animal and then immediately demanding her to get you a beer. = +3 pts in 1973, -9 pts in 2014, total score = -6 pts 
  • Suddenly, carnival boobies! = +6pts 
  • In an embarrassingly choreographed fight scene, Starbuck wraps his legs around a dudebro and then bites the fuck out of his neck for the honor of his nerdy belle. = +10pts (Pre-AIDS America was a magical place.) 
  • Drunkenly reading Walt Whitman with your equally soused snake. = +7pts 
  • Rape-hongry dudebro climbs into nerdy girl's window and triggers her drunken anti-rape python. = +11pts 
  • Dudebro satisfies his carnal hunger not with virginal nerd tang, but by murder-flexing his pythons to murder a python. = -6pts 
  • Seemingly enticed by the notion of rape, nerdy daughter jumps Starbuck's bones. = +6(sexy) points 
  • While crying isn't the best reaction to a post-coital “I love you,” it's certainly the most common. = -4 pts 
  • Too occupied with singing in the shower, dudebro lets Dr. Stoner get the drop on him and slip a revenge mamba into the tub. = +8 pts (why wasn't this the central plot of the movie? Black Mamba's Revenge, baby!) 
  • Dr. Stoner demands that his daughter not have sex with the handsome young man living in their house. Sorry, dad, but your little girl has already been Starbucked! Woop woop! = +4 pts 
  • Oh, wait... nevermind. Starbuck's overnight transformation into Snake-Face has pretty much garotted his sex life. =-4pts 
  • Professor Matthau-Nixon arrives just in time to catch a peek at Snake-Face and get blackjacked over the head. = +3pts (Nobody likes that guy anyway.) 
  • In a scene that clearly inspired The Jigsaw Killer, Dr. Stoner locks up his antagonist and hides two keys to his escape – one fake, one real – in cages with venomous snakes. Diabolical! = +12pts 
  • It's really not your day when you escape death by poisonous snake bites only to be strangled and eaten by an anaconda. = -2pts 
  • We're pretty sure that Dr. Stoner sent his daughter on a snipe hunt for a bogus package and encouraged her to sleep at the post office in case it arrives. Is there no end to the man's evil? = -6pts
  • The strongman's toodle-oo. = +9pts 
  • When nerdy daughter is horrified to discover that the freakshow snake man is Tim McGraw, we're not sure if the tear trickling down the snake man's cheek was part of the act or from the Vietnam amputee having a PTSD episode. = -4pts 
  • Dr. Stoner successfully settled the creation-evolution controversy by turning a man into a cobra because... oh, the nanobots went into sleep mode during the evil soliloquy. Something about Adam and Eve and science, we guess. = -6pts 
  • Since dudebro seemingly dies of a heart attack, his girlfriend (wait, he has a girlfriend? WTF, dudebro!) is wracked with guilt after believing that she committed death by snu-snu and gives the police a funny anecdote to tell at their annual ball. = +6pts 
  • The dividing line between mad science and evil science is crossed when you turn a man into a snake just to make him fight an actual snake. = -7pts 
  • The mongoose is loose! = +4pts 
  • Cobras are like children: take your eyes off of them for a second and they inject neurotoxins into your veins. = -6pts 
  • Either those were some pretty good special effects or the filmmakers actually shotgunned a cobra's head off. = Points pending an ending credits reassurance that no animals were harmed harmed in the making of this film 
  • Snakebuck vs. Chekov's mongoose – final round, fight! Whoa, shit... are they actually letting wild animals fight on screen? = Points pending! 
  • Ending the movie with nerd girl screaming in horror at the sight of her former lover being waggled to death by a mongoose. = -20pts 
  • There went the credits with no American Humane Association disclaimer. = -30pts
Total Score = -12 pts
Available: DVD, herpetological archives, crusting away in a snake fetishist's VCR

For all of its foreshadowing (alternative title could have been The Mongoose That Wouldn't Shut Up) and promise (did Dr. Stoner not want his daughter sexing up Snake-Face for fear that she'd lay li'l Snakebuck eggs?), Sssssss was about as entertaining as one would expect from a film about a guy turning into a snake. Despite its boring shortcomings, the film managed to earn a PG rating despite featuring Saw-like tortureporn, two sex scenes, and an exploding snake head.

As noticed by this technician's friend during the viewing, the film's plot was consumed and shat out by Curse of the Puppet Master (they even referenced the connection) in an attempt at holding the World Record for Wackiest Motion Picture Homage. We'd run that film through the nanobots next, but the first movie still has them flinching at TV psychics.

Ssssssshould you watch Ssssssss? Not without a Ssssssscorecard, sssssssucka!

Score Technician: T. J. Geise

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Game of Thrones Season 4, Episode 1


Well, a lot has changed in Westeros since last season's totally satisfying conclusion, in which the gang, having solved last season's big mystery and defeated the big bad, engaged in a leaping high-five and rode their caravans into the sunset while that Shin's song from the mid-2000's blasted out the tape deck. Including, apparently, the invention of denim? (See above image. Aside: WHY WAS THIS NOT A BIGGER DEAL?) The real question you've been asking yourself for three seasons is: How progressive is GOT? Well wonder no more. For the next ten weeks TJ and I will be turning the dials, running the numbers, and pushing the pens.
  • Tywin Lannister gives up Machiavellian machinations and being "The King's Hand" (giggle, giggle) in favor of a new career in artisnal jewelry. = +2pts (We see an empty storefront in an abandoned southern mall in your future...father.)
  • Jaime Lannister makes the mistake of sitting down for a nice conversation with Dad... = -5pts
  • ...and somehow emerges with a win. = +10pts
  • Oberyn Martell makes his bid for the Iron Douche by molesting a few whores (female and male) and stabbing a nobody Lannister in the hand. = +5pts (For reminding the viewers that Lannisters always pay their debts.... and, apparently, have terrible metacarpal awareness.)
  • Watching three dragons fight over a mangled goat carcass looks a lot like the way we used to fight with our cousins over who got to play with Snake Eyes when we were younger...or Tight Ship when we were older. = +6pts
  • Turning down a good plate of pigeon pie. = -3pts
  • Licking the finger of a person who lives in a congested city without any obvious running water or available hand sanitizer. = -1pts
  • Gold Finger was a putz. = +5pts
  • Cannibals. = +3pts (For, after three seasons, finally hitting for the depravity cycle: incest, rape, cannibalism, and bad personal hygiene.)
  • The Adventures of Lone Hound and Arya. = +3pts
  • "Fuck the King." = +2pts
Episode Score: +27pts
Season Score: +27pts

In typical GOT premier fashion, the first episode reintroduces the (old and new) characters and reminds everyone where they are and what happened to them. Bravo to the showrunners for grounding tedious exposition in actual character moments, which with a cast this large and a plot so sprawling, isn't easy to do. It's nice to watch a show where the people putting it together assume that you wouldn't be watching the first episode of the fourth season having not seen a single episode. More shows should take this note (cough, Walking Dead, cough) At this point, it's impossible to gauge where the show is going (apparently even if you've read the books), but we can say that as long as John Snow promises to renew his vow of celibacy, our eyes won't stray.

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

Thursday, April 3, 2014

The Walking Dead Season 4, Episode 16


…And then there was one. It’s been a wild (and predictably bumpy) ride for Walking Dead. The highlights of Season 4 were among the best episodes of the whole series, balanced against some of the most hackneyed and aimless storytelling the nanobots have ever digested. The finale has promised us an answer to the mystery of Terminus. Let’s find out if it was all worth waiting for.

  • Good to see Herschel again, even in flashback form. = +2pts 
  • While fleeing a small herd, Michonne pauses to stab a puddle of zombie. = +4pts 
  • The leader of Daryl’s new redneck survivalist buddies gets ready to reenact this scene with Rick’s party. = -5pts 
  • Rick reminds us all that he’s a badass by RIPPING A DUDE’S THROAT OUT WITH HIS TEETH. = +20pts 
  • Unzipping pedo-redneck from nutsack to neck with a hunting knife. = +15pts 
  • Okay, Flashback Herschel, you’re starting to wear out your welcome. = -4pts 
  • Rick must have worked some kind of loaves-and-fishes-esque miracle with Daryl’s meager water supply in order to clean all that blood out of his beard. = +6pts 
  • Preparing to scope out the perimeter of Terminus, Rick tells his party to “spread out” and “stay close” in the space of three sentences. = -2pts (For lack of clear and consistent management.) 
  • Rick buries a go bag in the woods outside Terminus. = +1pt 
  • …Which is good, because TERMINUS BARBEQUE IS PEOPLE! = +10pts 
  • While attempting to flee the compound, Rick’s party stumbles into the Terminus séance room/holocaust memorial. = -7pts 
  • Best single-sentence pep talk in recent memory: “They’re going to feel pretty stupid when they find out that they’re screwing with the wrong people.” = +23pts
Total Score = +63pts
Season Score = +306pts

So, the good news is that Rick’s group has been reunited with Daryl, Glenn, Maggie, Bob and Sasha, and has been introduced to Abraham and his cohorts. The bad news is that they’re all the captives of some kind of highly organized cannibal cult. A pretty shitty way to end your day, but not a bad way to end the season. Congratulations, Walking Dead, you’ve successfully kept us from giving up on you guys for yet another season.

Score Technician: Joe Hemmerling

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Starship Troopers


When it was released, Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers was accused of promoting fascism and militarism. Today, it is seen as a relentless satire of war and one of the greatest post-9/11 allegories ever filmed, a feat made all the more impressive by the fact it was released four years prior to 9/11. So which is it, a stirring panegyric to fascism or a biting satire? The nanobots understand that you want to know more…

  • The Federation knows that wars are won with precocious child soldiers. = +3pts 
  • These special effects wouldn’t look out of place in Windows 98. Seeing as how the film was released in 1997, this is our highest compliment? = +5pts 
  • In a world where genocide is a moral imperative… = +4pts(For clearly stated goals for our protagonists.) 
  • “Battlefield reporter” has to be the worst job in the military. = -2pts 
  • Rico draws and sends a digital love letter to his girlfriend on a government-issued tablet, meaning digital privacy is no longer a concern. Most likely because these lunkheads have no conception of privacy. = -6pts 
  • Today’s lesson: violence is the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived. Welcome to the only school where lunch money theft is encouraged. = +4pts(For creating a society free of crybabies.) 
  • One benefit of a hyper-militaristic society: no one has any hang-ups about being touched by arm stumps. = +5pts 
  • The cheerfulness of Carmen’s response about Hiroshima being destroyed is downright chilling… but maybe that’s the point. = +4pts 
  • The late ‘90s were intent on making us think Denise Richards could play a scientist. Unlike The World Is Not Enough, implausibility is probably the point here. = 0pts (-5pts for setting a trend; +5pts for execution) 
  • And Neil Patrick Harris as: The Ferret Whisperer. = +4pts 
  • OBLIGATORY “THE BIG GAME” SCENE. = -5pts 
  • Things high schoolers of future Argentina do: play American football, go to “the dance.” +7pts (For reassuring us that American will eventually take over Argentina. Finally!) 
  • Diz, Rico’s stalker, is the quarterback. Liz Lemon really was a trailblazer. = +6pts, and +1 extra point for allowing a 30 Rock reference, net +7pts 
  • Most unbelievable thing in this film: Rico’s pacifist civilian parents are rich and have a great house. HOW COULD THE FEDERATION ALLOW SUCH A THING?! = -8pts 
  • How does NPH make playing creepy horndogs so sexy? = +4pts 
  • Carmen is being wooed by a sexy Chris Kattan. = -8pts 
  • When a one-armed, no-legged recruitment officer refers to you as “fresh meat for the grinder,” continuing to smile like a dumbass is of course the polite response. = +3pts 
  • Carmen makes a vow that, no matter what, she, Rico, and NPH will always be friends. I bet she said the same thing to Charlie Sheen and his skeezy drug dealer. = +5pts 
  • “The Federation will give me everything I need for the next two years.” Damn commies. = -3pts 
  • “Mormon extremists.” = +9pts, (One for each Tony Award won by The Book of Mormon.) 
  • Gary Busey had a son and he looks just as weird as you’d expect. = -6pts 
  • The dialogue could be lifted directly from an after-school special… but maybe that’s the point. = +4pts 
  • GRATUITOUS BOOBS! …but maybe the gratuity is the point. = +2pts 
  • Judging by the fact that our society allows the Duggars to have 19 kids, maybe requiring reproduction licenses isn’t such a bad idea. = +2pts 
  • Li’l Busey falls into the very narrow overlap in the Venn Diagram of “borderline crazy soldiers” and “classically trained violinists.” = -4pts 
  • Zander admits to Carmen that he is stalking her. She’s totally into it. = +3pts (For stalking with post hoc approval.) 
  • Carmen thinks Zander is flirting with her when he says that her flight status could be revoked. Talk regulation to me! = +3pts 
  • The Mobile Infantry uses live ammo during training exercises. Do we even need to say “what could go wrong”? = -4pts 
  • Death is so much more dramatic when framed with a crane shot. = +5pts 
  • HANK SCHRADER! = +15pts 
  • Goddammit Marie, you gave Hank the David Byrne-sized uniform today. -5pts(For making Hank look silly.) 
  • Bureaucracy doesn’t stand a chance against dramatic and violent gestures. = +7pts 
  • Do your part against the alien bug menace by viciously stomping unrelated Earth bugs. = +6pts 
  • Rico and Carmen’s attitudes swing wildly and without reason… BUT MAYBE THAT’S THE POINT. = +3pts 
  • Ok, the dude on that recruitment poster has a Hitler mustache. How did audiences and critics not get this is a satire? = +10pts 
  • It may sound simplistic, but in the heat of battle, “KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL!” are actually pretty solid orders. = +3pts 
  • The military cameraman keeps filming as a bug devours his friend. Now that is job dedication. = +3pts 
  • Pundit finds the idea of a bug that can think offensive, most likely because that’s one more thing bugs can do that he can’t. = -5pts(For reminding us that FOX News will still exist in the future.) 
  • Carmen thinking Rico is dead does nothing but create forced drama… but maybe that’s the point. = -4pts 
  • ELLIS CARVER! = +9pts (You know, from The Wire? It ran for five seasons on HBO. …Philistines, all of you.) 
  • Carver keeps shooting the bug after it’s dead, so we’re definitely dealing with Season 1 hothead Carver. This could be a problem for Rico. = -3pts 
  • “You got a bug problem, ma’am?” Even in the face of overwhelming odds, there’s always time for a little levity. = +4pts 
  • There is an enormous beetle that sprays fiery acid out of its forehead. Is it too late to declare allegiance to our new insect overlords? = -10pts 
  • Let’s all drink beer while stranded on a hostile planet! = +5pts (For beer!) 
  • Casper Van Dien can’t act his way out of a paper bag. And yes, that’s definitely the point. = +5pts 
  • Having your romantic dance scored by a violin playing Li’l Busey is as terrifying as anything else in this film. = -9pts 
  • Nothing is too urgent that it can preempt sex. NOTHING. = +4pts 
  • Diz forgot to put her plot armor back on after boning Rico. = +5pts (For that goofy smile on her face as she got impaled.) 
  • Rico tells NPH that dying is what Mobile Infantry is good at and we honestly can’t tell if he’s bitter or proud. = +7pts 
  • Nope, he’s totally proud of his squad’s excellent death proficiency. = +10pts 
  • Rico’s newest troopers barely look old enough for the Hunger Games. Which is pretty much what they’re in for, so may the odds be ever in their favor. = +5pts 
  • When someone’s dying words are a declaration of genocide, it’s hard to feel bad for him... BUT MAYBE THAT'S THE POINT. = +10pts 
  • HUMANITY! FUCK YEAH! +10pts

Total Score = +122pts
Available: Amazon Instant Video, Netflix DVD

Starship Troopers is nearly scorecard-proof. So much of this film is calculated to be a certain kind of bad, meant to play up the mindless jingoism of certain other science fiction films. Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards play their roles without a hint of self-awareness, and the film is all the better for it. They say their cheesy dialogue and try their hardest to sell banal romance plots. The horrific themes would surely earn demerits in other films, but Verhoeven presents them in a way that both hilariously and damningly skewers them. In short, this film is brilliant because it has the appearance of awfulness, and as a result, the nanobots’ calibration needs to be reset.

Score Technician: Andrew Daar