Jason goes to Asianfest--Day 7

Wednesday night was shorts night for me, starting with the documentary program Roots and Reality:

TWO SECONDS AFTER LAUGHTER: And experimental piece about dance, Indonesia, America, and--of course--laughter.

MAKING NOISE IN SILENCE: Okay, this is the third documentary I've seen about deaf people in 3 different festivals all withing one month. It's like the universe is telling me to puncture my eardrums...or at least learn sign language. The cool thing with this one is it takes place at the California School for the Deaf in Fremont, which is literally right across the street from me.

TREASURE OF THE LISU: Specifically, the treasure of the indigenous stringed instrument--the Chiben--they play, as told by master and grandfather Ah-Cheng. There aren't a lot of Lisu left, much less Chiben players/crafters. So if his grandchildren don't pick it up, he might be the last Chiben player in his village.

ROOTS OF LOVE: Stories of Sikhs, the tradition of uncut hair and turbans, and the societal pressures from the larger outside society for them to cut their hair.

WINDOW CLEANING SHANGHAI: Exactly what it sounds like, very short, and some amazing images that really trigger my acrophobia.

And then the program XXX Shorts, which wasn't hard core porn, it was a program of more confrontational shorts to celebrate SFIAFF's 3oth (i.e., XXX) year.

LOOKING FOR JIRO: A campy music video about the one documented gay man in the Japanese-American internment camps during WWII. Not much is known about him other than he worked in the mess hall and liked muscular men. I was a little puzzled when he started braiding challah, and even more confused when he put them on his arms to simulate muscles.

FORTUNE COOKIE MAGIC TRICKS: A funny mash up of styles and genres. It's a musical...and a romance...and a coming-out family drama...and a zombie flick? Wow!

GREEN PLASTIC SANDALS: The ghost of her dad haunts a woman who is about to enter into a mixed marriage.

38-39 (DEGREES CELSIUS): A cool animated story/dream of a man in a public bathhouse.

DOWN UNDER: A really, really terrifying portrayal of torture (I'm a guy who watches a lot of horror, and I had to cover my eyes at times) with an amazing twist at the end. It's from Australia, and about the racism against Indians there (that I had never heard of.)

BLEACHED: A Filipino-American high school girl and her overbearing beauty queen mother who wants her to bleach her skin. Of course, it turns out to be a very, very bad idea.

THE ARRIVAL: A satirical take on a local Asian-American church that opens its doors to the LGBT community.

NISA: The great escape of a Thai sex worker. Lovely ending.

MODERN FAMILY: Nobody brings the creepy murderous weirdness like the Koreans. Nobody.

WHY I WRITE: Kosal Khiev delivers a powerful take on his life as an Khmer-American who got mixed up in gang violence and was deported to Cambodia, a country he had never seen. Excellent use of black and white and spot colors.

Total Running Time: 191 minutes

My Total Minutes: 273,910

Jason goes to Asianfest--Day 6

Two more movies last Tuesday, let's jump right in

First up was a war drama CATCH, from highly regarded Cambodian directory Rithy Panh. It's based on a story that was originally set in WWII, but he has updated it to Cambodia in the Vietnam war. An American pilot crashes and is captured by a group of local boys, led by orphan Pang (also known as "The Bastard.") The local Khmer Rouge is impressed, and leave the boys in charge of guarding him. Pang also very explicitly finds a new family as they tell him, "From now on, Angkar is your only family." They keep a very tight watch on the pilot, at first keeping him in a well and laughing as he refuses to eat a fish head. Eventually, some lines of friendships form, but of course they are always tenuous. It's a pretty powerful portrayal of war, particularly from a child's perspective. And I was left with the point that war is hell not because of what others do to you, but because of what it can make you do to others.

So after that, how about a bit of a light comedy? I got that with DELHI IN A DAY, the story of a wealthy family living in a mansion in Delhi and their English friend Jasper (the son of the father's friend and boss) who comes for a brief visit. Jasper has cashed out his savings and taken a trip to India to find...something. Something spiritual, he thinks. He wants to see the 'real India,' not just the world of his father's colleagues. So instead of being picked up by a servant in a car, he takes a taxi (that takes way too long and overcharges him.) When he's there, he's not exactly rude to their hospitality but he's way more interested in the lives of the servants (especially the lovely Rohini.) But his very presence upsets the household dynamics, and a bit of tragedy strikes. Ultimately, while he's looking for something 'spiritual' or 'real' he finds that India is just as complicated and contradictory as a nation of a billion people naturally would be.

Total Running Time: 181

My Total Minutes: 273,720

Jason goes to Asianfest--Day 5

It started on a Thursday, right? Anyway, I missed the whole first weekend because I was still rocking Cinequest as hard as possible. But the day after it was over, I was up at the Kabuki for a couple of films and an Arrogant Bastard Ale in the Kabuki bar between films (keeping alive my streak of giving up sobriety for Lent.) Let's jump right in.

I started with the short WHAT'S UP IN THE FUTURE? a short doc about two old friends looking through a health and wellness catalog and deciding what products might be nice and what ones they'd rather die than use. My favorite line was something along the lines of 'only if I get Alzheimers, so I forget how embarrassing this is.'

And that was the lead in to THE SPACE IN BACK OF YOU, a documentary about dancer/choreographer Suzushi Hanayagi. She was classically trained in Japanese dance, then took up modern dance in New York, and ultimately fused the two. The film is heavy on archival footage (which is not always of great quality, but very interesting to see.) It also uses her own quotes and interviews with contemporaries and collaborators. These include dancers who I had never heard of, but are apparently quite avant garde. The one guy I recognized was David Byrne. And the most important interviewee is her long-time collaborator (they joke that it was as if they were married) Robert Wilson. Of course, all the interviewees had nothing but praise for her. I couldn't help but think that if I were versed in the world of modern dance, I would have gotten a lot more out of this. As it was, it was pretty nice to get a little introduction to her life and her work.

And then the late show of the night was NIGHT MARKET HERO. It's described in the guide as a "paean to the kinetic insanity of the mid-90s Hong Kong comedy films" but to me it also had a bit of a mid-80s American 'ragtag group of misfits save their special place (camp, rec center, home, etc.) from an evil developer' comedy feel to it. In fact, it has quite a lot of this, as that's ultimately the plot of the movie. But before that, we meet the colorful gang of characters who work at 888 Night Market in Taiwan. Au Hua is most accurately the hero of the title, the union leader who looks after everyone, keeps the gangs out, and officiates disputes between Happy Chicken Fillet Lady and Mrs. Steak. But the corrupt developers come in. And they have at their disposal a corrupt city councilman (who had past ties to Au Hua) and a violent street gang. Lots of fun, and damn I could go for either a Happy Chicken Fillet or a Steak. They both looked so delicious.

And that was my first night at Asianfest 2012. Sorry I'm behind, I'm trying to catch up before the big San Jose weekend.

Total Running Time: 194 minutes
My Total Minutes: 273,542

Jason hosts Bad Movie Night--UNDER SIEGE

Gather 'round children, and I'll tell you a story of long ago. The year was 1989, Erika Eleniak was hot as hell (and in the pages of Playboy) but there was no Internet to speak of. So if you wanted to see her magnificent titties, you couldn't just do a Google Image search of "Erika Eleniak Under Siege Cake Scene" (be sure to turn off the safe search filter in the settings.) No, you either had to buy a paper copy of Playboy (always a danger that the parents would discover it) or you had to watch a ridiculous action movie starring Steven Seagal, Gary Busey, and Tommy Lee Jones (trivia: one of these guys actually went on to become an actor!) That's right, back then action movies weren't about plot or characters or anything like that, they were stupid things you had to sit through an watch 90 minutes of crap to see 3 seconds of some chick's boobs.

Of course, I was fifteen back then, and I've never, ever regretted seeing UNDER SIEGE. Until now. Goddamn that was painful. Granted, I was sleep deprived from Cinequest and I was a little drunk, but I didn't "host" so much as "survived" that dog turd. Now excuse me, I've got some googling to do. And then some sleep.

Running Time: 103 minutes

My Total Minutes: 273,348

Jason goes to Cinequest--Encore Day

After that epic after party the night before, I'm surprised I woke up for anything, but I made it to three more Cinequest movies

I started with the jury award winner for best comedy, COME AS YOU ARE (HASTA LA VISTA), which was an excellent, bittersweet treat. It's a road trip comedy about three disabled friends (two wheelchair bound, one blind) from Belgium who run away from their parents (whom they've always relied on) to travel to Spain. See, one of them has a friend who lost his legs in a war, and told him of this amazing place in Spain--a brothel that specifically caters to disabled clients. Of course, all road trips need some obstacles, and that starts right away when one of them gets bad news from a doctor. So instead of taking a completely sanctioned road trip with a reputable caregiver (with their parents knowing everything except the ultimate goal) they decide it's all or nothing and sneak away with a less reputable caregiver (a gruff, heavyset woman) in a much less fancy van. That's just the first of their problems, as things never really go according to plan. One of the delights (although it can be awkward to watch) is seeing disabled people being just as selfish jerks as anyone. That shouldn't be a surprise, but somehow the disabled are always portrayed as somehow gaining righteousness through their disabilities. Not here--they are just as big of jerks as anyone (well, at least one guy really is.) And on one last note, the disabled acting was spot on, if it weren't for one magical scene at the end I'd have believed they actually got disabled actors. Come to think of it, that scene could've been CGI, I guess...?

Then I had a bit of time for a snack at the array of food trucks they had parked on 1st street outside the California. Cinequest actually shut down the whole block for it, and it was pretty cool. I had a Ricky Ricardo at Babaloo, and it was pretty delicious. Perhaps more importantly, it provided a social gathering space for the day. While I liked encore day last year, one of the things I noticed is it was much lower energy. Just the die hard, a bit tired and maybe hungover from the previous night's party, shambling from film to film. With the food trucks, there was more of a party atmosphere immediately. Of course, I still had the VIP lounge and some more free Stella Artois, which was also nice.

My second film of encore day was WORTH THE WEIGHT, and I'd like to say it was worth the wait, but ultimately I felt it was lacking something. Robbie Kaller plays Sam Roberts, a former college football star who blew out his knee and since has become a >400 lb loser working in a bowling alley. His best friend (and fellow bowling alley employee) gives him awful, awful advice--particularly about women. He does join a gym, determined to lose some weight and get back into shape (actually, the sad thing is he can jog better than I can) and falls for his trainer Cassie. She, meanwhile, likes him but has an off-again, on-again relationship with a totally pretentious douchebag. And you can probably guess where this is going, and you'd probably be more or less correct. And there's really nothing wrong with this sweet romantic comedy, I just felt it lacked much energy. I don't know, your mileage may vary.

And then in the next time slot I had already seen everything that was playing, so I ended my Cinequest 22 with a second helping of my favorite of the festival, Kurt Kuenne's SHUFFLE. Still beautiful and it can still make me tear up at the right moments. Having seen it before, I noticed a few call-backs to his previous work--The SLOW sign from SLOW is displayed on a wall and David Bagby's (Zachary's grandfather from the heartbreaking DEAR ZACHARY) name is on Lovell Milo's cell phone. I also payed more attention to the religious elements of the movie. It's rare in this cynical age to actually see a character get down on his knees and pray, but Lovell actually does it twice, once in church and once in a classic scene on the street in the rain. And it works both times, but is never really in your face of annoying like "this is a movie about GOD!" (and I say this as an atheist--the religious scenes in this movie worked.) And ultimately, having seen it before I didn't have to worry about "figuring out" the gimmick, and instead could see how well arranged (or rearranged) his life scenes were as an evolving, illuminating theme. Really, really well done.

And that's it, with that my Cinequest 22 was done. By the numbers, I saw 54 screenings at Cinequest, including doubling up on SHUFFLE (so 53 different movie programs.) That was a total of 5,194 minutes of different movies (5,276 if you count SHUFFLE twice) or 60.9% of the 8,529 total minutes worth of movies in the festival. Not bad...not bad at all.

And then I would have gotten some sleep, but I still had to host Bad Movie Night that night.

Total Running Time: 283 minutes

My Total Minutes: 273,244

Jason goes to Cinequest--Closing Night

4 more movies, on the "Closing Night" of Cinequest (which is the real penultimate night, as there is still one more encore day.)

I started the morning with CHEAP FUN, a movie about an all-night party (appropriate foreshadowing for my own life, perhaps?) A group of college friends in Anytown, U.S.A. (but shot in San Jose) get together and smoke and drink at Ian's house. But eventually Ian gets tired of the routine and convinces them all to go out and do something...anything. Turns out that's a really bad idea. They look up an old friend, drive way too drunk, relationships fall apart, and people end up in bad places (I want to avoid spoilers, but examples of bad places to end up after a night of partying might be...jail...or the hospital?) Nice ensemble cast, funny story with touching moments as well. And a good message--if you're gonna get high/drunk, for god's sake just stay at home like always.

Next up was MARIACHI GRINGO, which was my surprise hit of the festival, meaning it was one that I thought would be kind of silly and some light fun, but it turns out I liked it a lot more than I expected. It stars Shawn Ashmore (Iceman in X2 and X-MEN: THE LAST STAND) as a small-town Kansas boy who dreams of being a mariachi. He always wants to eat at the local Mexican restaurant (conveniently named El Mariachi) and is a fan of all things Mexico. He even insists that Mexicans invented corn (bear in mind, he has the cojones to say this in Kansas...not quite Nebraska, but a fairly corn-filled state in its own right.) He's friends with an old man who was a real mariachi, and he heads off to Mexico (Guadalajara, to be precise) to pursue his dream of being a "simple mariachi of the people." There he gets quite a bit of help from love interest Lilia (Martha Higareda.) He's admittedly got some chops on the guitar, and has quite a bit of flair, but he hasn't spent a lifetime learning the hundreds of songs mariachis have to know and be able to to play on request. So he learns the songs, and learns some life lessons, too. I think what I really loved about this movie is it best exemplified this year's Cinequest theme of "Never Ending Passion." Really, a sweet, funny movie that's different...but good.

Then we got into some free-spirited wackiness with DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR. I have to admit, at first I thought the title might refer to the cast having delusions that they know how to act. But I got over that pretty quickly and it just won me over with its spirit. It's the story of Rocio, a young, sexually experimental (at least, with socks, tape, and condoms) lady who goes off her medication and moves from her small northern Californian town to live in San Francisco. There she moves in with transgender drug-addict Illusion (at least, she's addicted to her favorite drug--her hormones.) She gets a job at a local coffee shop, where she's rude to the customers. She is convinced that the lady who sells flowers outside is her mother (at least, she's the spitting image of her mother from when she was little.) And she has lots of wacky adventures with sex and drugs. And lots of cool San Francisco locations (I loved the joke about "South Vanessa Street.") And it even included my home away from home, the Roxie (just a shot of the exterior, but I always love seeing that.)

Then it was finally time for the big closing night gala. We had the traditional moment where all the filmmakers who are still present got up on stage. We had the announcement of the award winners (my favorite has to be SHUFFLE winning the New Visions category. Second favorite would be KING CURLING winning the audience award.)

And then the big closing night film, director Terence Davies came on stage for an interview and to accept the Maverick Spirit award (wand he was so giddy he almost left the award on stage.) He was very funny, and even regaled the audience with poetry. I cannot confirm this, but I heard a rumor that he had quite a bit to drink before the interview. If he did, he still carried himself well. And who could blame him, I'd been drunk on Cinequest love (and alcohol) for the past two weeks (and, as you can see, it wasn't about to stop.)

Anyway, the closing night film THE DEEP BLUE SEA is an acting tour-de-force for star Rachel Weisz. She plays Hester Collyer, wife of (much older) judge William Collyer. The movie opens at the ending, with her attempted suicide, and we work backwards to learn the story behind it. Specificially, we learn about her love affair with Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston,) an RAF pilot and WWII hero. And, of course, this affair cannot possibly end well (which we already know from the beginning.) It's magnificently shot and acted, and a pretty solid dramatic story. It's really a very good movie, I just happen to prefer my closing night (or, for that matter, opening night) galas to be light and fun.

Anyway, after that there was an epic after party at the Tech Museum. Allegedly it was catered by Restaurant O, but I don't actually remember food. I probably ate, I definitely drank (usually two-fisted,) and I definitely partied the night away until they cut off the beer and hurried us out at about 1 am. Then a big bunch of us--fans, filmmakers, etc. were contemplating where the after hours party room was. Turns out, it was in the room adjoining mine and we had a shared door that turned it into the party double-room. I didn't get to sleep until about 5:30 am. My sense of decorum forbids me from actually revealing what went on. Or who, in fact, the owners of the party room were. In fact, I refuse to even reveal their nationality for fear of being labelled racist against Irishmen.

And that's how Cinequest almost ended. I still have encore day to write up.

Total Running Time: 391 minutes

My Total Minutes: 272,963

Jason goes to Cinequest--Day 11

Aka, the penultim-ish day ("Closing Night" is Saturday, but there's an encore day so there are really 2 days left.) It was a good ol' 6-movie Saturday, so let's get to it.

First, after a couple of warm-up Stella Artois (official sponsor beer of Cinequest. Sponsor beer always tastes better.) I was over to the Camera 12 for my first movie.

We started with my new favorite short, ZOLTAN, THE HUNGARIAN GANGSTER OF LOVE. I have a hard time deciding what my favorite part of it was. It was either when he went to the barber who looked like Hitler, or when the big fight was going to happen and I thought to myself, 'I hope it's a dance-off' and then (SPOILER ALERT) it totally was! I wanna be a Hungarian gangster of love. In fact, I even tweeted that in real time.

So I was tweeting in a theater--against all my sense of decency--because the feature encouraged that. It was the documentary TWITTAMENTARY. Let me just list some of the tweets I made with some added commentary.

Ready to tweet the shit out of #TWITTAMENTARY at #Cinequest

#TWITTAMENTARY begins. #Cinequest

[Clearly I'm off to a rousing start.]

There are millions of people who trust twitter? Really? I don't know any of them. #TWITTAMENTARY #Cinequest

Great, we start by tweeting what you eat...#TWITTAMENTARY#Cinequest

Apparently, Twitter lives in Grand Central Station?

[Sorry I forgot the hashtags on that one.]

Stop subtitling English in English. #TWITTAMENTARY #Cinequest

[I got into a mini-debate over whether those were subtitles or tweets displayed on screen. Both were happening, but there was quite clearly a lot of times when people were speaking in real life (not just reading tweets) and they were subtitled. I shouldn't let this bother me as much as it does...but it does.]

As someone who is famous for his hugs, I have to correct you, a Tweet is not a hug. #TWITTAMENTARY #Cinequest

[Ask around at Cinequest. I'm not just bragging, I'm a world-class hugger.]

I wonder if they'll ever get to the birthplace of Twitter--SF.#TWITTAMENTARY #Cinequest

[Answer: No. Which if the rest of the movie was better wouldn't have bothered me. Twitter exists all over the world, so no reason to elevate one city above others. But they did elevate two cities--New York and Los Angeles.]

Are you kidding me, the one part they don't subtitle is when the wind is blowing and you can't hear the audio? #TWITTAMENTARY#Cinequest

So the kids behind me weren't allowed to watch ZOLTAN, but can see Mika Tan? #Twittamentary #Cinequest

[Okay, this was my favorite thing about the screening. The second and third rows were reserved for a junior high class. But apparently the teachers decided ZOLTAN, THE HUNGARIAN GANGSTER OF LOVE would be inappropriate, so they seated them between the short and the feature. And then the film crew visits porn star/legal Bunny Ranch (Bunnies!) prostitute Mika Tan. They didn't show much of her work, but there were a lot of her in provocative, scantily clad poses, and one with a see-through top that was a bit nipply. Way more inappropriate than anything in ZOLTAN.]

And that was all my tweeting. Bottom line, it was a movie for people who don't know what Twitter is, and presented people who don't use Twitter anything like I use it. I think I'm fairly well versed in Twitter, but I prefer to use it for snarky comments instead of changing the world. Because if you're using Twitter to change the world you always have to worry that the next celebrity death/scandal will overtake you as a trending topic. I think the story of the homeless girl tweeting is pretty interesting, and from her following she has gotten help. But you know what could have helped her even more than a Twitter following? ALMOST ANY OTHER FORM OF HELP!!!!

I guess I was just hoping they'd show more of the cynical, sarcastic side of Twitter--the corner of the Twitterverse where I live.

Anyway, then I was off to a good documentary, starting with the short DEAF NOT DUMB. They turn off the sound and deaf ASL poets jam about...well, about how they are deaf, but not dumb. It would have made a good pairing with DEAF JAM from SF Indiefest (although maybe a little too on-the-nose.)

Then we got to JASON BECKER: NOT DEAD YET. Jason Becker was a rock guitar prodigy. He was a rapidly rising star, and was lined up for the gig to be David Lee Roth's new guitarist. And then he got ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease.) He was given 3-5 years to live. But now it's over 20 years later. He is confined to a wheelchair, communicates only through eye movements (but communicates well) and, most amazingly, still composes music. It's the sort of story that even if the filmmaking was crap, it would still be an amazing, compelling, and inspiring story. But first time feature director Jess Vile nailed it. He drew on a ton of home videos, interviews, and old news articles to tell the whole story of a rock star on the rise. If anything, his disease and fall come in too late, considering that the audience knows all along what's going to happen. But I think we can all be forgiven for wanting to spend a few more minutes living in the world when Jason Becker was still walking on stage and ripping off amazing guitar riffs. I think what amazed me the most is how Jason still has a wicked (and kind of childish) sense of humor. My favorite part was during the Q&A when he was asked how it felt to see his story on screen, and he responded, "It's about time, dammit!"

Oh yeah, I guess I should tell you that Jason Becker (who is a Bay Area native, from Richmond) and his whole family were there along with Jesse Vile. And it was just awesome to see him.

The only problem was I couldn't bring myself to miss the Q&A, so instead of catching MARIACHI GRINGO (which I will catch Saturday) I caught a later screening of FIVE HOURS SOUTH. Which wouldn't have been bad, except that FIVE HOURS SOUTH is the SAMUEL BLEAK of 2012 (look at my coverage of last year's Cinequest to understand how much I hated SAMUEL BLEAK.)

So FIVE HOURS SOUTH is based on a true story. When he was young, Luca saw his best friend gunned down because they were all involved in drug dealing. Now grown up, Luca is a policeman and his other surviving childhood friend is a nightclub owner who of course is still involved with drugs. Okay, this could be a kind of cliched story but two friends on opposite sides of the law can have a lot of drama. But you know what would be even more compelling? What if Luca quit his job to try out for a dance show? Really, of all the possible dramatic stories (I don't care about SPOILERS, but his friend ends up killed) that's the one you go with? And that's not even the problem, it's just poorly done all around. He has a powerful line about how he's "not a quitter!" after he just quit the police force. His main competition, Energy, must have been named ironically given how little he does. In the first day of practice, the instructor insists she will work them all really hard, then calls it a day about 2 minutes in. Oh, and it's almost all in English, despite being set in Italy. In fact, a few characters speak Italian sometimes, so I'm to believe this takes place in the part of Italy where people mainly speak English? Is that true? I don't know...and really, I don't care.

So luckily I followed it with an absolute masterpiece, F.W. Murnau's FAUST. Epic sets, costumes, cinematography, and story (and LOVE, I think Murnau is under-appreciated for the amorous elements of his films.) Dennis James shaking the house with the mighty Wurlitzer organ and the theremin. Mark Goldstein providing the devilish counterpoint with the Buchla Lightning Wands. That might have just been the greatest cinematic event I've ever witnessed (at least until NAPOLEON later this month.)

Also, as a complete aside, it was cool learning Dennis James is on Facebook, so I friended him right away to keep track of when he's in town.

Then I had to rush a bit from the California to the San Jose Rep just as the opening credits rolled for MIXED KEBAB. It was a really nice story of love and intolerance. Bram is a Belgian of Turkish descent, a Muslim, and a homosexual, although he is arranged to marry his cousin back in Turkey and bring her to Belgium. He keeps his sexual orientation secret from his family, of course, and especially from his brother who is kind of a no-good punk. But when he travels to Turkey to arrange the wedding, he brings his boyfriend Kevin along but still tries to keep their relationship a secret (I figured he clearly wanted to be outed.) I really liked the obvious parallels between prejudice against homosexuals and prejudice against Muslims in Belgian (which makes it all the more interesting that the Muslims in the movie were the worst homophobes.) And I have to say, without giving away too much of a spoiler, there is a fake-out ending that nearly ruined everything, just before the "good" ending.

Then I went over to the at Pagoda Restaurant and Bar at the Fairmont (proud member of the Cinequest Dining Circle) just for a few drinks before heading to the midnight movie.

So finally I ended the night with GEORGE THE HEDGEHOG, a sick, profane cartoon (think Fritz the Cat) from Poland. George is a hard-drinking womanizing hedgehog, and a hero to all. And then a mad scientist clones him, and shit goes absolutely crazy. And I was drunk enough that I'm pretty sure I was still laughing my ass off even when I was falling asleep. I know I was awake enough to make a comment during the "rapture" scene (my friend Roy can attest to that.) I also felt like these were all clearly pre-existing characters, like this was a TV show jumping to the big screen. I was close, it's a comic book series.

Total Running Time: 559 minutes

My Total Minutes: 272,571