The 2nd MoFo Hall of Infamy : Son of Infamy

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Brendan Schaub: You'd Be Surprised

This guy's just throwing random stuff around without any real sense of delivery. Honestly, I was so bored that this might be worse than my first nom. At least I wanted to see how the other noms ended, even freaking Loqueesha.

0/10.



Yeah, a stand-up comedy special is an interesting beast in the context of this hall.

Like, obviously anything listed on IMDb goes, but it's a very different type of film. The usual conversations about plot, effects, etc don't quite apply. I suppose you can still talk about writing, acting, and camera movement.

I think bad stand-up is actually a pretty savvy nomination. It's less likely to have "so bad it's good" moments, or goofy special effects or whatever. And really there's little that's more painful than bad jokes.

My main reaction, not having watched it yet, is that "You'd Be Surprised" just makes me think of the Mike Birbiglia joke that has that line as the punchline:

I was moving a new bed into my apartment. And this woman let me in the front door with her keycard. She said, "I'm not scared, because a rapist wouldn't have a bed like that."

Now, what I should have said was . . . nothing.

What I did say was, "You'd be surprised."



Honestly, I just judged it by how much it bored me in comparison to the others. Now to clean my brain out, I'm finishing up the night with John Woo's The Killer.





I watched The Legend of the Titanic (1999) today. This animated film tells the "real" story of the sinking of the Titanic, which involves a giant Octopus and some evil sharks. The plot of the movie is inherently offensive and problematic as it tries to rewrite history and put a happy ending on a tragedy. The animation is mediocre, but I did enjoy the design of the octopus (which was ridiculous looking). Some of the voice acting was okay. I chuckled a couple times, but most of the film was fairly boring.



The Legend of the Titanic

I might as well review it, too. I understand that the Italian company wanted to make the ending less depressing for kids by saying "nobody died," but seriously? Rewriting a tragedy is something you just don't do in that way. Nevertheless, this is miles ahead of the other Titanic movie I nominated. The movie has an actual plot, albiet a randomly thrown in one that acts like a mix between a fairy tale and an anime, and that octopus is more creepy than he is cute. Shark mafia? I can kinda get behind that. Magic dolphins? Cheesy as hell and that kind of thing is so "everywhere" at this point that it feels just as typical in this movie as it does thrown in for the hell of it. But who thought of an essentially six-year-old octopus that's as strong and jacked as Hercules? I've seen cuter muscle-kids on Mucha ****ing Lucha.


Still, among all the kiddy stuff they threw in, the tone of the movie was surprisingly consistent. By the time you expect random kids stuff to be thrown in, it's not surprising anymore. And the characters and dialogue aren't plaguing the movie with too many random-ass subplots ripping off kids movies ranging from Disney to Bluth. It's a cheesy kids movie, nothing more and nothing less.


3/10.


Yes I nominated a 3/10 movie. I just felt like pairing both Titanic movies together.



I wonder how much discussion went into the decision to give the octopus a dog's nose.
As I wrote in my review, I prefer to believe that this is how the animator actually thinks an octopus looks.



I wonder how much discussion went into the decision to give the octopus a dog's nose.


"Give the octopus a cute face so we don't scare the kids."
"What kind of cute face?"
"I dunno, just take something you think is cute and work with it."


Hmmm, PUPPIES!



I rewatched my second nomination, Kinky Coaches and the Pom Pom Pussycats (1981). The first time I watched it, I was hoping it would be fun and amusing, but it was not. The writing and acting range from awful to mediocre. Performances are not believable and dialogue is cringe worthy. The film is generic, dated, and derivative. Most of the jokes aren't funny and the film is boring. This film needed to be more fun and have better attempts at humour. I did like some of the cute cheerleaders though. The title Kinky Coaches and the Pom Pom Pussycats is more amusing than the actual film.



I forgot the opening line.


Titanic : The Legend Goes On... - 2000

Directed by Camillo Teti

Written by Bozenna Intrator (translation), Jymn Magon & Camillo Teti

Starring Lisa Russo (voice), Mark Thompson-Ashworth (voice) & Susan Spifford (voice)

What we have with Titanic : The Legend Lives On... is basically a cute children's animated film about one of the most horrific and deadly disasters in history. This Italian production also manages to veer very close to Disney animated classics like Cinderella and Lady and the Tramp, adding a kind of blatant and cheap 'rip-off' feel to proceedings. Then you have to add it's very odd moments to the overall impression it gives - one example being the sudden introduction of a rap song from nowhere, with one of the dog characters rapping "It's Party Time!" apropos of nothing. It was originally released dubbed at 82 minutes, but was later completely re-edited with differing story, new musical numbers and a different score - this version running 70 minutes, where the story takes up around 50 minutes, and the credits (including 'happily ever after' stills) just going on and on, including many segments which had been edited out. The first makes much more sense, while the second is kind of a little crazy.

Angelica (dubbed by Lisa Russo) travels by train with her two wicked step-sisters and wicked step-mother, dreaming of one day finding her real mother and father and heading for a cruise on Titanic. Her only clue as to her mother's identity is a locket with a blue gem in it, inside a picture of her. Meanwhile, wealthy William (dubbed by Mark Thompson-Ashworth) boards the ship with his maid, who lost her daughter years ago. Other passengers include a trio of thieves, a police detective, a lady looking for a rich man, a failed banker, William's secretary, a singer and a group of animals - a Mexican band of mice, another group of Yiddish mice, a gaggle of geese, a pickpocket bird, a cat and at least 5 dog characters. Angelica accidentally drops her locket, and from that point forward it passes through many people's hands until it's finally brought back to her, thanks to the help from some of the animal characters. Meanwhile William meets her and falls in love - but, of course, history intercedes and the ship hits an iceberg on a cold, still April night.

There is much that's wrong with this film - especially the second version. The first is a very cheap, lousy knock-off, but the second version is a complete catastrophe, and one hell of a crazy film. It was the second version I watched first - it begins with the sinking, and then flashes back to all of the events which preceded it. Firstly, the tone is all wrong - and perhaps that's why such a deadly disaster should never have been the subject for a cuddly kid's animated film. There's the "It's Party Time!" rap - but also a prodigious amount of cartoon hijinks, with a chef chasing a mouse around, the three thieves continually providing slapstick pratfalls and that rapping dog. When we get to the stage where the ship hits the iceberg, the film blusters through the sinking in a rushed hodge-podge of scenes, because a lot of what's going on at that stage involved human suffering and death. Continuity goes out the window as the ship breaks apart, gets low in the water, is suddenly a lot higher again, breaks up again, breaks up again, disappears, goes back to being low in the water, breaks up again and breaks up again.

The songs lack energy, and sound derivative. I've already mentioned "It's party time!", and in the first version of the film it's still a rap, but this time many of the lyrics are unintelligible. In the second version, the singer goes for "My Heart Will Go On" with a kind of plain number about "Eternity" - and as the ship goes down she suddenly breaks out into her "Eternity" song again. Whoever is singing it sounds like she isn't quite sure of herself, and feels inhibited. The animation is lousy. It's good compared to films like The Misty Green Sky, but set against much else you notice how jerky and unsmooth it all is. It appears like an attempted copy of Disney-type character animation from their early days - and you can see moments taken wholesale from films such as Lady and the Tramp. The story lacks inspiration, and is obviously as unimaginative as you could think of - which includes the dialogue. The pratfalls and slapstick attempt to add energy to the film, but appear to have been constructed by cynical profiteers instead of artists. As the ship sinks, the animators still can't stop themselves trying to elicit a laugh or two.

I had a few laughs watching it. As the ship fills with water, stokers in one of the boiler rooms get buckets and start bailing water - back into the ship. Right back into the boiler room they're standing in. When William jumps into the freezing water with a child, he yells out "We've made it!" A very odd choice of words for the situation. Members of the Titanic crew shift in perspective, and as such suddenly grow three or four times larger or smaller depending on where they're walking, which is always fun. At times dialogue simply can't be understood, or else characters just start making unusual sounds. At times they'll be talking when their mouth is closed, and at other times their mouth will be closed as they're talking. The film will often make the logical seem bizarre, and the bizarre seem logical - and as a whole the project reeks of the most cynical kind of knock-off moviemaking, with the main impetus being the success of Titanic which had been released just a few years prior.

Was there anything good about the film? Well, I'm happy that the ship itself, R.M.S. Titanic, was faithfully reproduced, and the animators didn't simply go for any old ship design - which they could have. 1979 film S.O.S. Titanic was filmed on the R.M.S. Queen Mary, and it's kind of painful to watch. My father has been obsessed about Titanic most of his life, and I have to admit that some of that rubbed off on me, so I recognize the shape easily. The 3D CGI rendering of the ship might look kind of rough at times, and out of step with the more traditional kind of animation that's being used in this film, but I did like that they got that one thing right. Everything else about this reaches a level that's easy to mock. Angelica's locket might not have been The Heart of the Ocean, but it's a little too obvious. The group of Mexican mice might be a little too racist. Rapping "It's Party Time!" is a little too incongruous for one of humanity's greatest tragedies. Watching it all play out isn't all that much fun, until you start making fun of it - so if you're that way inclined I included one of the many webisodes that do just that below. It gave me a few good laughs.




"It's party time!"
__________________
Remember - everything has an ending except hope, and sausages - they have two.
We miss you Takoma

Latest Review : Le Circle Rouge (1970)




Brendan Schaub: You'd Be Surprised (Jay Lafayette, 2019)

Yeah I don't really know what to do with this. I don't really have much affinity for even good stand-up let alone, y'know, this but I think I maybe didn't hate this quite as much as most because of that. Like this doesn't seem that much worse than most of the stand-up I've seen (I can definitely think of worse) but its still clearly subpar and like a lot of stand-up is just casually every kind of phobic there is. A plus side to a comedy special as a nomination is that there is next to no visual component which left me free to browse other tabs a little bit here and there and do productive stuff like review the galaxy-brain schedule for the horror movies I'm going to watch during spooky month which I spent like way too many hours working on, sorting the films by runtime then lining them up with my work schedule (longest films for days off, shortest films for day shifts, stuff in the middle for night shifts (there is way more little details and nuances but that's the basic idea)) and going over the next Barbie films I'll be watching; the next one, Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper (idk if that's bad grammar or Barbie is both characters or if those characters are supposed to be the same character idk what that story is about) has a new director so that's intriguing but the same writing duo I've had mixed feelings about in some of the previous entries. Unfortunately, I couldn't completely tune out how annoying this dude can be (being a friend of Joe Rogan that's not the least bit surprising) and I'm baffled that he seems to think he gives off any kind of gay vibes as this is the straightest dude I've ever seen (derogatory). Thankfully his last bit was probably his best and was also probably the longest bit (though the one about the edible also went on forever) and that's only because it was more story than joke and my guy is marginally better at telling a story than telling a joke. This is def not good, didn't laugh, rolled my eyes more than once. No popcorn rating because I don't know how to apply that to stand-up and I also don't know how to rank this on the ballot. I'm sure it only being an hour will factor in tho.



I watched Carnival of Souls (1998). Directed by Adam Grossman, the film stars Bobbie Phillips, Shawnee Smith, and Larry Miller. Am I going crazy or was this actually not that bad? Granted, it's not very good, but it isn't as bad as most of the other films in this hall. I thought the acting was mostly okay. The story was somewhat interesting, although they could have done more with it. There were some boring parts, but also a couple of sort of cool moments along the way. This is nowhere near as good as the original 1962 Carnival of Souls and I don't plan on ever watching this one again, but it was tolerable. The direction and quality of the film are on par with a mediocre tv movie. Although this could have been a lot better, it could have also been a lot worse.
.



I watched Brendan Schaub: You'd Be Surprised today. I haven't watched a ton of comedy specials, but I liked most of the ones I have seen. This one is by far the worst stand up comedy special I have seen. Schaub simply is not funny. He is also not likeable. He doesn't have the necessary charisma or charm to pull off a comedy special. The jokes are not funny or witty. His delivery is poor and he just comes across as an obnoxious person rambling on, thinking that he is hilarious, when he is just annoying. I think I smiled once and almost half chuckled. How did this guy get a comedy special? The average poster on MovieForums is funnier than Schaub. Where are all our comedy specials?
.



Well, this Hall was torture, but I loved it. The movies were even worse than the first Hall of Infamy. Good job everyone! It is going to be competitive to see which awful film is the most awful. The real winner is the friends we made along the way.




Wild 90! (Norman Mailer, 1968)

The film is just bombarding you with an unbearable amount of testosterone, like being at a family gathering after your uncle's have had a few too many and like when you're trying to listen to your drunk uncle talk you start to tune it out real quick.
This is a classic description of anything to do with Mailer.



Well, this Hall was torture, but I loved it. The movies were even worse than the first Hall of Infamy. Good job everyone! It is going to be competitive to see which awful film is the most awful. The real winner is the friends we made along the way.

I kinda disagree. So far, Candy and Bane are my picks for the two best movies nominated on both HoI's so far.


Btw, I'll be reviewing A Talking Cat soon, but since he also directed one of the Puppet Master movies I wanted to get through that first. I try to keep directors I checked out base on marathon behavior so I can work on a sublist of the worst directors ever. I've got a couple other David Schmoeller movies to get through, but a David Allen marathon can wait since he's only directed four movies anyway. I'll likely get to them after A Talking Cat.



I forgot the opening line.
Well, this Hall was torture, but I loved it. The movies were even worse than the first Hall of Infamy. Good job everyone! It is going to be competitive to see which awful film is the most awful. The real winner is the friends we made along the way.
First to finish!

I also thought that this bunch of nominations were refined by our experiences in the first Hall of Infamy and that we're really good at seeking out the absolute worst of the worst - there have been some true shockers amongst this lot.



I forgot the opening line.


Brendan Schaub: You'd Be Surprised - 2019

Directed by Jay Lafayette

Featuring Brendan Schaub

So, MMA fighter Brendan Schaub decided he wanted to be a stand-up comedian - and, it's always an easy thing to imagine. He contributes to a few podcasts, and all of his friends think he's a pretty damn funny guy - so he should just go for it, considering it's always been a fantasy of his. Three years after his debut at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles, here his is with his first ever Showtime Comedy Special. Even for the funniest comedians around, that's fast. I have no real idea what this guy is really like - many stand-ups are notoriously difficult and egotistical, and some are really bad people in private (Cosby, I'm looking at you - because you were considered the best) but I assume some are also sweet, and nice guys. Usually when I see someone doing stand-up I really want them to succeed - we both win if they do. Unfortunately for Schaub, his set is made up of a bunch of lead balloons, and for his entire hour on stage I never laughed once. All I did was bristle when an early bit contained far too much naked racism than I could bear to listen to.

Honestly, I felt a bit sorry for Schaub. He doesn't seem to really have it, and I wonder where this man is going to. I just hope he at least thought he was killing out there, and had a good time with his show while it was happening. Of course, he's read the reviews by now, so I hope he had a strong sense of self in case his shattered ego couldn't withstand the embarrassment. People laughed during the show, but it was anything but a raucous audience - and I wonder if Showtime adds a little to make up for quiet stretches. Obviously the show wasn't a hands down success, and Schaub found himself on the outer, and let go. He also found himself on the outer as far as likeability went on the internet as well, and famously saw himself the subject of ridicule on Reddit and YouTube - so he ventured out on his own this year and made his own Comedy Special - The Gringo Papi, which has a 1.1/10 rating on the IMDb. I've never even seen a 1.1 rating before - so I assume that it's been flooded with people that hate Shaub, and that it also stinks. Probably more than You'd Be Surprised does.

All of this isn't going to go well for him - he can't really go anywhere from here. He simply doesn't have the comedic talents to. He could try acting I guess - and who knows how many awful comedians have carved out some kind of niche for themselves, so there's that. I also genuinely think he's gay - and I'm not saying that in a bad way, at all. I simply think he's gay - despite his often homophobic way of kidding around - there are so many signifiers there, and he just sounds gay. He fits the profile of a person that's very homophobic because he's gay perfectly. But he's not funny - at all. He doesn't even have a good sense of what funny is. It's not something you can fake your way through, as his experience with Showtime here illustrated. This was the least successful Showtime Comedy Special of all time, and now Schaub finds himself on a less regal looking stage, doing the shows that are going to be as far as he gets. There are deep shades of Andrew Dice Clay here, who rose to the point where he headlined his own big film after selling out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row. Clay was a horrible person, his film, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, flopped, and so began his precipitous fall. In the days of the Internet - those falls come faster, and are more thorough. People can see the real you in an instant, and for Brendan Schaub that isn't pretty.