Tuesday, July 10, 2007

What Cops Know


What Cops Know by Connie Fletcher

IATM Rating 85%

Ceilings dripping brain matter. Outright wars in the streets. Cat burgulars that shit on your bed while you're asleep. Bodies that have been sitting so long they pop open, spilling their stench for miles.

Dead men walking and talking with knives protruding from their heads. Women kidnapped and raped by entire ghetto apartment complexes, torture crews that force children to suck their father's dicks. Mafia families that hire madmen for enforcers.

DEA agents pinned down by automatic gunfire in a world where the backup never arrives. Serial killers that cut off the heads and hands of their victims so they can never be recognized. Children prostitutes who are more worried about home than the strangers in the cars...

Welcome to the world cops know....it takes a special type to work Homicide...Sex Crimes....and the Street...

Read this book as part of my research for Slasher....

Met with an Atlanta police officer who gave me several key details for the script. He assured me that the horror is real....he told me a story about eating a hamburger while watching a man on the sidewalk die...and began stuttering emotionally, when remembering something that happened to a two-year old...

i didn't probe...

you just have to get numb, he said.

More than frightening....insane.....like working at war, inc.

Wonderful book, frightening world.

But in the midst of it all, you have to remember to laugh.

You have to give the bodies funny nicknames. You have to tell war stories. You have to believe that there is a reason for every drop of blood spilled in the street, and that someday everything--all this madness--will end.

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Knocked Up!


Knocked Up

IATM RATING: 98%

There's been so much happening in Wondaland, I don't even know where to begin.

Let's start here.

Last weekend we all went off to see a little romance film called Knocked Up.

I went first with my girlfriend at the time, ex-girl, it's a complicated taking-two-weeks-off- because-we-fight-so-much-not-sure-if-we're-right-for-each-other-and-
she's-off-for-New-York-in a-month kind of thang...and then I went again with the Wondaland crew...because I loved it.

I saw this film two times in two days. For those that don't know, the premise is that a fat slacker named Ben Stone (played by Seth Rogen) has a drunken one-night stand with a gorgeous career girl named Alison Scott (played by Grey's Anatomy's Katherine Heigel). Alison gets pregnant and of course, hilarity and romance ensues, and finally since Hollywood is Hollywood, love wins the day.

What did I love about it? Let me count the ways:

  1. Writing, writing, writing: Judd Apatow's script was lean, spare, perfect--comedic with the perfect amounts of ennui, despair and postmodern romance glimmering through. My favorite scene was when Pete (Paul Rudd) and Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) sit in a playground and talk about bubbles. There's all these kids chasing floating bubbles. Ben asks Pete (who's already the father of two little girls) if he's gonna be alright, and Pete says no. Then Pete tells him not to ask him for any money, and then expounds on the childhood magic of bubbles. Genius. A comedy film version of the paper bag scene in American Beauty.
  2. The comedy troupe: Everyone in this film is a comedian. Let me repeat: everyone in this film is a comedian. If you blink, you'll miss five gags. Everything is effortless, and the supporting characters are so over-the-top and stellar you have to go back again just to see the whole ensemble in action. It's like watching a comedic symphony. Honorable mentions go out to Craig Robinson, the club doorman, who improvs his way into greatness with lines like: "They only let me let in 24 1/3 black people, so I have to find 24 black folks and a midget..." Brianna Brown who plays a crackpot work associate of Alison Scott. Her "I don't like secrets" and "Yeah, I can't believe it either"s were priceless. Ken Jeong's insane doctor routine was hilarious. Ben's friends (played by Jason Segel, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Martin Starr and Charlyne Yi) were classic. Like a Miles Davis quintet. Charlene was continually high and out of control: "Can we trade boyfriends? Huh, huh. I'm just kidding. Sort of."
  3. The Fantasy: And there's this part. Knocked Up plays to everyone's fantasies in a good way. Women truly want the selfless guy, the guy who looks out into the world and only sees their twinkling eyes. And men...what do we want? We want to get drunk, go to a hot club, meet a girl waaaaaay hotter than us or anyone we know, get her pregnant, and then...get condemned to spend the rest of our lives with her. Like how can I do this, marry Halle Berry?!?I'm ruined, ruined!
Go see it. Take someone you love or want to get pregnant.