Archive of entries posted on 1st June 2003

Frank Answers: Who Should Play Me in the Movie, Free Publicity, and Writing the Bible

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Jose from Bombay, India writes:
I’m a film student, and I would like to make a movie about your life based upon your website. How do you feel about Tobey Maguire playing the role of
Frank J.? Or maybe Val Kilmer?
That’s funny; I got told twice in one day that I look like Tobey Maguire (that was when the Spiderman DVD had just some out). Val Kilmer sounds good to me, but I hear he is hard to work with.
I’d say go with a no name actor and spend your entire budget on the car chases and shootouts.
If you need a costume designer, you can contact my sister.
No, she’d probably dress me in French clothing just to be spiteful.
Serenity from Argentina writes:
I finally got a real blog site (http://www.serenitysjournal.com/). Will you help spread the word?
No.
mrmii from Atlanta asks:
Who wrote the Bible?
I guess the best way to find out is to check one. Hmm… doesn’t seem to list an author on the cover. Maybe it was written by Anonymous. I don’t think Joe Klien wrote it, though.
Oh, now I remember. It was Gutenberg. He was inspired by God, and thus he smashed metal, paper, and ink together and there appeared the words of the Lord. And all Gutenberg’s friends were like, “Wow, Gooty!” (his friends called him “Gooty”) “That’s so cool you got the word of God there. Let’s go drink some ale.”
So Gutenberg printed up a bunch of copies of the Bible and went drinking. While he was away, some people broke in and stole the first half of the Bible and ran off. They used that to form their religion, the Judaism, and immediately started on their Zionist conspiracy which involves space lasers (of which I believe they are still working on today).
So then the pope comes by, and he’s like, “Hey, Gooty, you do a gooda job writing down the word of the Lord. Here’s a magical amulet to protecta you froma the spiders. They no longa bite-a you and make-a you itch.”
And Gutenberg said, “Thanks, pope-a! You sucha nice-a guy!”
And he was so happy, but then some Muslims came and were all angry and said, “Infidels! We kill you for not believing what we believe!”
And the pope said, “Momma-mia! But whata do you believe?”
And Muslims responded, “Well… er.. we’ll get back to you on that.”
So they got Mohammed to write the Koran so they knew what to kill people for not believing. And thus there was peace in the world… or was it that the status quo prevailed? I get those two confused sometimes.
If you want to learn more about all this, you can read Religion for Dummies, unlike me.

Please keep the questions coming, <a href=”mailto:THISISSPAMTHISISSPAMace you’re from, I’ll randomly select one.

Movie Review: Equilibrium

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Why hadn’t I heard of Equilibrium (2002) before? Apparently, it was a regular movie release back in 2002, but they must have given it so little publicity that I never heard of it. But the DVD came out about the time of Matrix Reloaded, and I heard a number of people mention it (including Ebert) saying that if you wanted more cool action, check it out. So I did, and hot damn! Some of the action scenes in this movie are so cool that everything else pales in comparison. If you had just watched one of those kick ass shootouts, and then Fonzie walked into the room, you’d beat him up for being a nerd. Yeah, they’re that cool.
Basically, Christian Bale is this guy called a cleric, and they practice gun-katas, the turning of fighting with two handguns into an actual martial art. It’s just something that has to be seen to believe. And, they actually save the best for last, a final fight with one man against dozens of others with machine guns, ending with a gun-kata vs. gun-kata battle at close range which is half martial arts fighting, half gun battle. Again, it just has to be seen to understand how cool it is. Oh, and in their dress uniforms, they carry katanas, so there is a gratuitous katana fight at the end as well. It’s like they said, “This movie already has lots of awesome action, but let’s throw in a katana fight just to make the film more appealing to Frank J.”
Oh, yeah, the plot. It’s about emotions being repressed in people so that war and conflict will be avoided. Christian Bale does an awesome job acting, but I think it just can’t help but be a B film. The villain, to me at least, is just too cheesy. Maybe other’s will like the plot better, but it was hard for me to care when the action was that cool. If Gattaca had tons of awesome shoot outs, I probably wouldn’t have cared so much about the whole genetic issue because it just got in the way of the action.
Anyway, if you’re like me, and you occasionally pop in the Matrix DVD and skip straight to the lobby scene, then the best thing I can say about Equilibrium is that after watching it the first time, you’ll soon want to pop it back in and skip straight to the final battle sequence.
Four out of five stars.