FUCK THAT CALF!

Not everything is sacred.

 

 

THE BOONDOCK SAINTS

Let’s go back to the early 2000s and remember a time when a little movie that could took the home video market by storm.  This flick was slick as hell and had dude bros everywhere in an uproar over how awesome it was.  I speak of The Boondock Saints, a mostly mediocre flick that somehow managed to get hailed by the masses as the very film that Thomas Edison invented cinema for.  I will admit that I even own a copy that I cherished for a few years until I finally saw my first Tarantino film and realized that Troy Duffy was a derivative hack.  First off, how in the fuck do you cast Norman Reedus as an Irishman?  His accent is TERRIBLE.  I’m really curious to see how bad the other ones were if he’s the one that beat them and got the part.  Now let’s get to my major gripe: the style.  This movie is probably the epitome of style over substance because it’s just drenched in this too cool for its own good post-Tarantino style.  First we get most of the action scenes in flashbacks.  This lets the movie do all sorts of “totally super cool” intercutting sequences between the cops doing forensic work and the action actually happening.  How in the shit are we supposed to have any sort of suspense in the action scenes if we can clearly see the bodies on the ground before we even see them get shot?  I mean sure, in Die Hard we have a pretty good idea that John McClane is going to make it to the end, but we don’t know that and thus we get some suspense during the action scenes, which makes them fun and exciting.  Of course I’m being unfair because I doubt Duffy had any intention of making these action scenes exciting and instead wanted them to be “cool.” That’s the only justification I can make for his constant use of pointless slow-mo, the generic rock soundtrack all wrapped in the suspense void flashbacks.  What you’re looking at in those scenes is Duffy jizzing all over the screen at how “totally cool and bad ass” he made his characters.  Let’s put it this way: when The Fast and the Furious has more depth than your movie, you’re doing something wrong. – ASW

 

THE SEX PISTOLS

The Sex Pistols are revered as the original punks but really they’re just the original pop punk band more interested in cultivating the perfect anarchist image down to their clever names and artfully ripped clothing then the actual music. Yes punk was a movement of creativity and passion unhindered by talent, a means for musicians to express their anger at society and the twenty minute guitar solos that so populated seventies rock. But at its heart punk is still about the music and everything else is just the tattooed and safety pinned Mohawk on the cake. The Sex Pistols were more about manager Malcolm McLaren’s desire to be trendy and famous than any music or anarchist movement. He fully admitted to plotting out their entire career from the beginning – how is that kind of calculated fame mongering not the exact opposite of punk rock?
And yet they’re still debated by many as superior in the eternal Sex Pistols vs. The Ramones debate. The Ramones had all the zeal, fury, and fuck authority attitude that so resonated with the kids and terrified the parents but they still managed to make damn good music that still holds up today. But Johnny Rotten couldn’t take them seriously as indicated in his memoir Rotten, “[The Ramones] were all long-haired and of no interest to me. I didn’t like their image, what they stood for, or anything about them.” Wow I had no idea that the length of your hair had anything to do with your ability to write music. A cat fight over hairstyle is more something I’d expect from the current Disney star tabloid war than rebellious punk rockers.
Seriously right now off the top of your head think of five Ramones songs; now try to name anything other than the requisite two Sex Pistols hits. Unless you’re a diehard fan or rock historian it’s just not happening because while their image has held up as the quintessential punk look, as many a whorish pop star has proved looks fade but good music is forever. A philosophy clearly not prescribed to by McLaren, Rotten, et all when they dropped original bassist Glen Matlock for not conforming to the Sex Pistols persona and replaced him with Sid Vicious who had virtually zero bass experience but made up for it with his rocking hair and legendary reputation in the scene. While Sid Vicious’ heroin addiction ultimately led to the band’s demise his involvement in the infamous murder of Nancy Spungen in NYC’s Chelsea Hotel and following overdose at the age of 21 forever cemented them in the annals of rock and roll history which is probably all they every cared about anyway. But I maintain that good rock n’ roll stories does not equal good rock n’ roll. – AS