Versatile Canine Officer 3: The Big Barkening
Autumn is officially here, and this year's bad summer movie business is finished. The most recent volume is the most widely available "K-9" picture. It also manages to be the absolute nadir of the series. I got my copy from the library, because there was no way I was going to pay for this piece of shit. I swear, I am going to feed that fucking dog some strychnine.
"K-9: P.I."
(2002)
By the time the third "K-9" feature hit DVD rental shelves across the globe (sorry, Brazil), our main actor-turned-musician had already hit late-career paydirt with the ABC sitcom "According To Jim." That abomination has been in production long enough to have entered syndicated reruns this fall, which is probably why al-Qa'ida continues to hate America. Yet, despite its star's fame, this is the shoddiest of the batch. As directed by TV veteran Richard J. Lewis (no relation to the onetime BoKu pitchman), it's exceptionally drab and poorly lit. Packed with desperate product placement, it even opens with a shot of a foot stepping on a discarded Burger King cup, its contents spewing forth to form the title of the film in animated milkshake. Belushi shamelessly dons a House of Blues shirt like he did in "K-911." Jerry Lee, now played by a dog named King, looks a lot less fluffy and, oddly, younger than he did in the previous film. They couldn't even get the guy who played Captain Byers in the first two to come back. One of the really funny parts comes before the movie's even started - it's the standard pan-and-scan disclaimer, "This film has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit this screen." The thought that this menagerie of grotesqueries was shot on 35mm and that anyone expected theatrical distribution is pure comedy.
We open with Dooley, whose first name has somehow changed from Mike in the first movie to Tom (as in, "Hang down your head..."), pretending to be a blind harmonica-playing hobo. He's staking out what he believes to be a crime, but turns out to be a surprise retirement party for Jerry Lee and himself. The best part of his bum ensemble has to be a t-shirt boasting the bold, timeless question: "Who let the dogs out?" Amid the text, three anthropomorphic bodybuilder dogs stand, arms crossed, ready to take action against anyone who has issue with said dogs being let out. Dooley continues to wear this daring attire for a good portion of the film, which says pretty much all you need to know about him. That, plus he drinks out of the same glass of beer as his canine partner and now drives a baby blue Ford Mustang.
Driving home from the fête, the 'Stang runs out of gas right in front of some late-night espionage at a high-tech lab, which leads the newly retired cops to investigate, get pinched by the Feds for interfering and have their pension cash frozen until the bad guys are caught. This leaves them in a jam until one of the cops tells Dooley he should use his private investigator's license, or at least rent Jerry Lee out as a stud. So, naturally, he takes out an ad in the paper, then brings the decorated officer to the park and starts yelling at random dog owners about coming over and getting busy with his companion. A mincing bald gay stereotype named Maurice sashays up, scaring Dooley, who thinks he's being propositioned. Maurice just wants to hook Jerry Lee up with a girl dog so they can make babies. At this point, we are treated to the film's only moldy oldie montage (they could probably only afford to license the one this time, as they use some generic band covering "Green Onions" later on), wherein Billy Preston's "Nothing From Nothing" accompanies a parade of prospective dog sperm recipients. It's quite clear that Dooley is also sizing up the owners, looking to hook up with a hot lady himself - it is not addressed, so we can deduce that his bickersome romance with Sgt. Welles from "K-911" came to a spectacular end. However, Dooley's dual purpose gives the scene a creepy undercurrent, like something out of "Audition."
Dooley likes this one boring blonde woman named Catherine, so he arranges a mate date between Jerry Lee and Catherine's dog, a German Shepherd named Molly. To prepare, man and dog take a bath together, which is much grosser than the shower in "K-911" since we get a whole lot of intimate grooming here. Still, Jerry Lee knows what he likes - big white poodles - and he won't fuck Molly until they dress her in a big white poodle costume. I am not kidding about that. After this unpleasant business, Jerry Lee starts acting real funny. A x-ray confirms a little square thing lodged in the dog's intestines. The vet advises Dooley to just wait for it to dislodge naturally and to buy some air freshener. They're both curious about what that little square is, although the audience knows it's the amazing microchip that the thieves were trying to steal from the lab because we saw J.L. eat it.
The constipated pooch farts a lot, so much so that when a hot, dark-haired femme fatale named Laura shows up to hire P.I. Dooley to find her missing fiance, the pudgy ex-cop gets all embarrassed and decides to take matters into his own hands. He dumps beans, cabbage, prunes, mineral oil, curry powder, Dodger Dogs and some identified substance into a blender, then pours the puree onto a slice of pizza. The result is the only scene in the entire trilogy which genuinely made me laugh like a maniac: when they get to the dog park, the most HILARIOUS barrage of sound effects is unleashed to connote a huge dog crapping like a damn tsunami. Other dogs run away whimpering, and one leaps into the arms of its nauseated owner.
This scene also contains footage of Jim Belushi, sporting rubber gloves and a gas mask, straining a Ziploc bag full of fresh dog diarrhea over his bathroom sink. At least they spared us from witnessing the collection of said diarrhea from behind the park bushes.
Dooley and Jerry Lee investigate the microchip business and make a little time to look for Laura's hubby-to-be. They go to a cheesy dance party in a warehouse loft, where Dooley turns down two hot raver girls who try to make out with him (these chicks are obviously rolling hard) and Jerry Lee gets festooned with glowing necklaces and twinkly doodads, prompting Dooley's quip, "What are you, a party animal now?" Blah blah blah, the microchip thief is also the missing fiance. Laura's crushed that her man lied to her, so Dooley nobly offers to let her spend the night at his crib. Jerry Lee seems pissed about this intrusion until he sees Laura's dog - a big white poodle! He taps that ass, but Dooley only gets to first base. This, after having gone to the effort of fishing through a box of raisin bran to fulfill the comely brunette's bizarre request for a bowl of raisins. She feeds one to him seductively, and when they kiss, their mouths are still full of chewed-up raisins. Whether this is more disgusting than the diarrhea-straining scene, I cannot say. And people thought the turkey metaphor in "Gigli" was sick...
I haven't really gone into Jerry Lee's nut-biting in my previous "K-9" reviews. A prominent scene in each of the films centers around Dooley interrogating some uncooperative male suspect. The dog will saunter up, let the guy pet him for a bit, then affix his teeth to the man's bathing suit area. This is sometimes accompanied by an exaggerated crunching sound effect. The guy will soon tell Dooley what he needs to know, and it is with much obvious disappointment that the canine cop removes his slobbery maw from the dude's groceries. The guy in this one is sitting at a restaurant table, and that's all I really have to say about that.
Anyhow, it should surprise no one that Laura is in on the whole crime business, and she in fact turns out to have been playing everyone involved in the job. After Laura gets busted, Dooley gets a call from that bland Catherine lady, who tells him that the puppies are ready. The parents and owners meet at the park to watch the lil' scamps scamper around. Dooley picks out the one who farts at him, and makes googoo eyes at Catherine, who responds by being nice. Here is my biggest problem with "K-9: P.I." - it thoroughly plays into the whole "brunette = bad, blonde = good" cliché. Everyone knows that this is bullshit because blondes are far more trouble, but you still see it trotted out in instances such as this. It's like the bad guys wearing black hats in an old, pre-revisionist Western. I suppose you could argue that this tired convention, tied as it is to the private dick milieu, can be considered an homage to film noir. You could probably say the same thing about the, um, minimalist lighting in a number of the film's interior shots. I say both production aspects are simply the tropes of a lazy, uncreative movie. However, at this point, I've been through so much with Mike/Tom Dooley and Jerry Lee that I fear if "K-9: IV Fed" shows up in stores, I'd feel compelled to sit through it. Ugh.
This block of type was created to the sounds of Lääz Rockit's nostalgic Annihilation Principle, Xiu Xiu Larsen's pretentious ¡Ciaotistico!, Bruce Dickinson's underhailed Tyranny of Souls, Cathedral's mountainous In Memoriam, Goodie Mob's fonky Soul Food and Sabaton's amiable Attero Dominatus.
Here's a review of one of the three live shows I attended on Thursday and Friday. As for the other three bands I saw: Make Believe had good drumming but remained a bit boring, Man Man was amazing as expected and Asobi Seksu kicked up a lovely storm, despite their crucial guitar sound being as buried in the mix as Arch Enemy's had been earlier in the evening. I've been to too many shows with terrible sound mixes lately... but maybe it's just me. Maybe my hearing is finally shot. Whatev.
"K-9: P.I."
(2002)
By the time the third "K-9" feature hit DVD rental shelves across the globe (sorry, Brazil), our main actor-turned-musician had already hit late-career paydirt with the ABC sitcom "According To Jim." That abomination has been in production long enough to have entered syndicated reruns this fall, which is probably why al-Qa'ida continues to hate America. Yet, despite its star's fame, this is the shoddiest of the batch. As directed by TV veteran Richard J. Lewis (no relation to the onetime BoKu pitchman), it's exceptionally drab and poorly lit. Packed with desperate product placement, it even opens with a shot of a foot stepping on a discarded Burger King cup, its contents spewing forth to form the title of the film in animated milkshake. Belushi shamelessly dons a House of Blues shirt like he did in "K-911." Jerry Lee, now played by a dog named King, looks a lot less fluffy and, oddly, younger than he did in the previous film. They couldn't even get the guy who played Captain Byers in the first two to come back. One of the really funny parts comes before the movie's even started - it's the standard pan-and-scan disclaimer, "This film has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit this screen." The thought that this menagerie of grotesqueries was shot on 35mm and that anyone expected theatrical distribution is pure comedy.
We open with Dooley, whose first name has somehow changed from Mike in the first movie to Tom (as in, "Hang down your head..."), pretending to be a blind harmonica-playing hobo. He's staking out what he believes to be a crime, but turns out to be a surprise retirement party for Jerry Lee and himself. The best part of his bum ensemble has to be a t-shirt boasting the bold, timeless question: "Who let the dogs out?" Amid the text, three anthropomorphic bodybuilder dogs stand, arms crossed, ready to take action against anyone who has issue with said dogs being let out. Dooley continues to wear this daring attire for a good portion of the film, which says pretty much all you need to know about him. That, plus he drinks out of the same glass of beer as his canine partner and now drives a baby blue Ford Mustang.
Driving home from the fête, the 'Stang runs out of gas right in front of some late-night espionage at a high-tech lab, which leads the newly retired cops to investigate, get pinched by the Feds for interfering and have their pension cash frozen until the bad guys are caught. This leaves them in a jam until one of the cops tells Dooley he should use his private investigator's license, or at least rent Jerry Lee out as a stud. So, naturally, he takes out an ad in the paper, then brings the decorated officer to the park and starts yelling at random dog owners about coming over and getting busy with his companion. A mincing bald gay stereotype named Maurice sashays up, scaring Dooley, who thinks he's being propositioned. Maurice just wants to hook Jerry Lee up with a girl dog so they can make babies. At this point, we are treated to the film's only moldy oldie montage (they could probably only afford to license the one this time, as they use some generic band covering "Green Onions" later on), wherein Billy Preston's "Nothing From Nothing" accompanies a parade of prospective dog sperm recipients. It's quite clear that Dooley is also sizing up the owners, looking to hook up with a hot lady himself - it is not addressed, so we can deduce that his bickersome romance with Sgt. Welles from "K-911" came to a spectacular end. However, Dooley's dual purpose gives the scene a creepy undercurrent, like something out of "Audition."
Dooley likes this one boring blonde woman named Catherine, so he arranges a mate date between Jerry Lee and Catherine's dog, a German Shepherd named Molly. To prepare, man and dog take a bath together, which is much grosser than the shower in "K-911" since we get a whole lot of intimate grooming here. Still, Jerry Lee knows what he likes - big white poodles - and he won't fuck Molly until they dress her in a big white poodle costume. I am not kidding about that. After this unpleasant business, Jerry Lee starts acting real funny. A x-ray confirms a little square thing lodged in the dog's intestines. The vet advises Dooley to just wait for it to dislodge naturally and to buy some air freshener. They're both curious about what that little square is, although the audience knows it's the amazing microchip that the thieves were trying to steal from the lab because we saw J.L. eat it.
The constipated pooch farts a lot, so much so that when a hot, dark-haired femme fatale named Laura shows up to hire P.I. Dooley to find her missing fiance, the pudgy ex-cop gets all embarrassed and decides to take matters into his own hands. He dumps beans, cabbage, prunes, mineral oil, curry powder, Dodger Dogs and some identified substance into a blender, then pours the puree onto a slice of pizza. The result is the only scene in the entire trilogy which genuinely made me laugh like a maniac: when they get to the dog park, the most HILARIOUS barrage of sound effects is unleashed to connote a huge dog crapping like a damn tsunami. Other dogs run away whimpering, and one leaps into the arms of its nauseated owner.
This scene also contains footage of Jim Belushi, sporting rubber gloves and a gas mask, straining a Ziploc bag full of fresh dog diarrhea over his bathroom sink. At least they spared us from witnessing the collection of said diarrhea from behind the park bushes.
Dooley and Jerry Lee investigate the microchip business and make a little time to look for Laura's hubby-to-be. They go to a cheesy dance party in a warehouse loft, where Dooley turns down two hot raver girls who try to make out with him (these chicks are obviously rolling hard) and Jerry Lee gets festooned with glowing necklaces and twinkly doodads, prompting Dooley's quip, "What are you, a party animal now?" Blah blah blah, the microchip thief is also the missing fiance. Laura's crushed that her man lied to her, so Dooley nobly offers to let her spend the night at his crib. Jerry Lee seems pissed about this intrusion until he sees Laura's dog - a big white poodle! He taps that ass, but Dooley only gets to first base. This, after having gone to the effort of fishing through a box of raisin bran to fulfill the comely brunette's bizarre request for a bowl of raisins. She feeds one to him seductively, and when they kiss, their mouths are still full of chewed-up raisins. Whether this is more disgusting than the diarrhea-straining scene, I cannot say. And people thought the turkey metaphor in "Gigli" was sick...
I haven't really gone into Jerry Lee's nut-biting in my previous "K-9" reviews. A prominent scene in each of the films centers around Dooley interrogating some uncooperative male suspect. The dog will saunter up, let the guy pet him for a bit, then affix his teeth to the man's bathing suit area. This is sometimes accompanied by an exaggerated crunching sound effect. The guy will soon tell Dooley what he needs to know, and it is with much obvious disappointment that the canine cop removes his slobbery maw from the dude's groceries. The guy in this one is sitting at a restaurant table, and that's all I really have to say about that.
Anyhow, it should surprise no one that Laura is in on the whole crime business, and she in fact turns out to have been playing everyone involved in the job. After Laura gets busted, Dooley gets a call from that bland Catherine lady, who tells him that the puppies are ready. The parents and owners meet at the park to watch the lil' scamps scamper around. Dooley picks out the one who farts at him, and makes googoo eyes at Catherine, who responds by being nice. Here is my biggest problem with "K-9: P.I." - it thoroughly plays into the whole "brunette = bad, blonde = good" cliché. Everyone knows that this is bullshit because blondes are far more trouble, but you still see it trotted out in instances such as this. It's like the bad guys wearing black hats in an old, pre-revisionist Western. I suppose you could argue that this tired convention, tied as it is to the private dick milieu, can be considered an homage to film noir. You could probably say the same thing about the, um, minimalist lighting in a number of the film's interior shots. I say both production aspects are simply the tropes of a lazy, uncreative movie. However, at this point, I've been through so much with Mike/Tom Dooley and Jerry Lee that I fear if "K-9: IV Fed" shows up in stores, I'd feel compelled to sit through it. Ugh.
This block of type was created to the sounds of Lääz Rockit's nostalgic Annihilation Principle, Xiu Xiu Larsen's pretentious ¡Ciaotistico!, Bruce Dickinson's underhailed Tyranny of Souls, Cathedral's mountainous In Memoriam, Goodie Mob's fonky Soul Food and Sabaton's amiable Attero Dominatus.Here's a review of one of the three live shows I attended on Thursday and Friday. As for the other three bands I saw: Make Believe had good drumming but remained a bit boring, Man Man was amazing as expected and Asobi Seksu kicked up a lovely storm, despite their crucial guitar sound being as buried in the mix as Arch Enemy's had been earlier in the evening. I've been to too many shows with terrible sound mixes lately... but maybe it's just me. Maybe my hearing is finally shot. Whatev.
posted by SoulReaper at 1:53 PM
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Gigantour builds monument to Megadeth's influence
Headlining the second annual Gigantour at Chicago's Congress Theater Friday night, Megadeth treated fans young and old to a finessed set brimming with confidence earned through experience. Although their tourmates largely outshone Megadeth in sonic force, the quartet held up alongside some of today's most revered metal bands.
Gigantour is to Megadeth what 2004's Curiosa Tour was to The Cure. The headliner is an iconic veteran band, and the rest of the bill is filled with popular modern acts that reflect the legend's influence in one way or another.
As led by guitarist/vocalist Dave Mustaine since 1983, Megadeth brought technical acumen and challenging song structures to thrash metal. An original member of Metallica, young Mustaine was a brash and impressive frontman, a guy whose drug and alcohol problems only seemed to fuel the ramshackle extravagance of his music. Eventually, for a sad spell during the '90s, the songs calmed down and become a sort of conventional melodic hard rock. Megadeth followed Metallica into mainstream radio stardom, but could not maintain the commercial success their longtime rivals have.
The band simultaneously suffered fallout from metal fans who considered them sellouts, something Mustaine has tried to fix with the band's recent albums. The last of these, 2004's The System Has Failed, came after Mustaine injured his hand and broke up Megadeth for a while. It contained a few tunes up to the band's old standard, but overall felt like a half-hearted attempt to recapture past glories.
Mustaine sounded noticeably restrained on the mic Friday, yet he and his assembled players (including half of the Canadian power/thrash band Eidolon and bassist James LoMenzo, once of glamsters White Lion) took advantage of chestnuts like "Wake Up Dead" and "Hangar 18," wherein vocals are almost an afterthought among their labyrinths of bracing guitar riffs. A new song, "Washington's Next," proved that while Mustaine's music has grown less antagonistic with time, the cynicism that energized vintage Megadeth (and thrash metal at large) is still very much alive.
As main support, Virginia's Lamb of God was perhaps overqualified. Sacrament, the band's fifth album of harsh, choppy thrash, debuted at number eight on the Billboard Top 200 last month, cementing their spot as one of the most popular metal bands in America today.
On top of their prodigious skills, Lamb of God can command a mosh pit frenzy more capably than any of their peers. Their music owes a lot to Slayer’s tough-as-nails bludgeoning and to the fierce rhythms of modern metalcore. However, as guitarists Willie Adler and Mark Morton stomped and squealed through complex crowd-pleasers like "11th Hour" and the new "Walk With Me," it was clear that there's plenty of Megadeth in there as well.
Sweden's Opeth provided a prog rock respite, with acoustic guitars, vintage keyboards and Martin Axenrot's jazzy drumming draped like velvet over their evocative death metal hybrid. The quintet's penchant for long, hypnotic journeys only allowed them a four-song set, but when vocalist/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt dropped from a guttural growl to a lilting singer-songwriter tone, the stark beauty carried as much power as one hundred ripping thrash riffs. Poor sound plagued the entire event, but the extra dose of oppressive bass gave Opeth's acoustic number "Windowpane" an unexpectedly ominous wallop.
Arch Enemy's melodic death/thrash suffered most from the muddy sound, but the Swedes cut through the aural muck with some bright guitar harmonies. Vocalist Angela Gossow remains an engaging presence, as much for her enthusiastic crowd interaction as for the fact that she's an attractive woman growling for an unabashed metal band.
The most surprising act on the Gigantour bill was Overkill, an old-time New York thrash metal act still near and dear to aging headbangers' hearts. Though their career has lasted more than twenty years, they've never risen above the ranks of club favorites, but their inclusion on a high-profile tour like this was extremely welcome. Longtime vocalist Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth and bassist D.D. Verni delivered minor classics like "Elimination" and "Fuck You" with such frantic energy, one had to wonder why they bothered to play a silly punk song that pays homage to the old school; Overkill could have used that time to play another real old school number instead.
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