Hat tip to @SusanneWhite: Anonymous is a Roland "Independence Day" Emmerich film about how Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare's plays. Holger Syme, Shakespearean professor, did not like Anonymous.

( I question your commitment to a well-mannered debating style, sir! )

Small, and somewhat late, but the mousie who wrote this up for wank_report did such a good job that I thought it had to be done. One caveat, however: due to the vagaries of my internet connection, I cannot access Twitter right now, so I have no way of telling whether or not my links are working. If I've ballsed anything up, please let me know and I will try to fix as soon as I can. Anyroad:

Listen and attend, o my beloved. Once upon a time in a town called Melbourne, just north of Antarctica, there was a newspaper called The Age. And in The Age lived a happy little film critic called Jim Schembri. Lots of people hated him because of his unremitting dislike of Australian films - one film maker famously said "Fuck you, Jim Schembri!" as he accepted an Australian Film Institute award. Schembri once wrote a stingingly accurate satire on bloggers that I post here to demonstrate his acute grasp of new media.

But that doesn't matter right now. Suffice to say, the man has form.

The latest turn in the Schembri saga began when he spoiled the ending of Scream4 in the first sentence of a review that appeared online on the Fairfax news site for around 24 hours, and consequently spent a few hours at the top of the Rotten Tomatoes website. This, predictably enough, caused some online unrest, with upset tweeters saying things like "Douchebag! You spoiled the film!" etcetera. So the review's wording was slightly changed the following day so that the spoiler was not so evident. Fair enough. A mistake was made and rectified. But - and this is where the wank begins - some special internet magic happened.

It turned out that THERE HAD NEVER BEEN A SPOILER. Jim Schembri has a twitter account, notable for the fact that under his "following" tab is the number 0. Yes, he follows absolutely no one. And he posted a tweet which said that those who had seen the spoiler were hallucinating, or something.

Clearly, an Age critic is NEVER WRONG.

In brief: the story continues here and here, as picked up by fellow critic Luke Buckmaster.

But then came the truly bizarre twist: a crazy flurry of tweets in which Schembri started going on (and on) about a time machine - and making a mock, or so he thought, of Luke Buckmaster.

Buckmaster updates the story on his blog.

Much hilarity ensues on twitter, especially as Jim signs his tweets with his own name. But then...

He follows up with a series of breathless tweets promising the TRUE STORY of the Twitter outrage!

And lo and behold, my beloved, in today's Age the explanation is unfolded in its full glory. It was a social experiment! He planned it all along! Jim Schembri "punk'd the Twitterverse!" He's just like Noam Chomsky!

[Editor's note: A hint, dear critic: no-one, but no-one, is like Noam Chomsky. Possibly not even Noam Chomsky is like Noam Chomsky.]

The "twitterverse", naturally, is less than impressed, but highly amused to have its low expectations so richly rewarded. Also puzzled that a once respected Melbourne broadsheet daily is prepared to publish such drivel. How the mighty have fallen.

The moral of the story, children, is simple. See how much more work you make for yourself when you can't 'fess up to a simple mistake? How many keystrokes you waste? How the Will o'the Wisp of Vanity leads you ever deeper into the Swamps of Delusion and Stupid?

Bonus: Max Lavergne on That Time Machine.

Also, Schembri's twitter account

So Sucker Punch came out this weekend and not only did it Fail To Impress, But it also Didn't perform as expected

People give their thoughts around the internet. Most people hated it along with a very vocal few who liked it.

HOWEVER, being a Zack Snyder movie... This shit blows up over at the Spill community.

For those of you who don't know: Spill.com is an internet based film review community (that recently expanded to video games) that gives podcasts and animated film reviews.

So as usual, a review is posted (review in bad taste with rape, skip if you wish )

Usually reviews get a fair amount of comments within their weekly film reviews. But for some reason this weekend SHIT BLOWS UP about this movie giving heated debates on Why this is a bad movie and you are bad for liking it; or you need to calm down and have a good time.

And it all starts here (I posted the link from page 45 since that's where it all started. you may have to go a few pages down until the wanky stuff finally gets started)

If you're not in the mood to read ALL of the mess here is a breakdown of the community:

. Spill members hate Zack Snyder
. Film Causes debate because his name is on it
. Usually in the community everybody likes to automatically agree with the critics despite not having seen said movie for themselves
. Debates are caused on OMG THE FILM INDUSTRY IS COLLAPSING NOW11!!11, stop liking what I don't like, why Zack Snyder is the devil.. the works.
. Comments criticizing the reviewers on WELL WHAT DID YOU EXPECT FROM THE TRAILER? OMG YOU'RE SO UPTIGHT

Oh and there was also a cute little side wank about the audio podcasts being too long


note:I edited the entry to fix a link and tags and warning suggested by commentor (thanks) 

A few months back, the enigmatic Confused Matthew reviewed the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. The 3 part video review involved a lot of "This ISN'T A FILM! It's an ART PROJECT!" and "Land scape......lands scape.....land scape....I heart HAL.......colours......space foetus."


People respond to his review and Confused Matthew responds in turn and it all goes quite well.

Until Chase posts a nine part video screed in which he takes the review personally and uses one massive tone argument.

Confused Matthew responds. After a two part video response, Confused Matthew posted a video saying he was halting the reviews in fear of indeed becoming too personal.

Until today, when he posted part 3.

Grab the popcorn, sit back, and watch.

My Lord,

I hope this missive finds you well, for I write to you now with the most dire of news. A new enemy threatens our homes, our families, our very existence.

I am speaking, of course, of that movie about Scott Pilgrim.

( Read more... )

ETA from ilinana: Banned!

1. Pixar makes incredible, mind-blowing third movie in Toy Story series.
2. Rotten Tomatoes logs over 130 reviews - all positive.
3. Toy Story 3 gets it's first (so far, only) bad reviews.
4. Internet explodes. (Also here.)

The wank seems to be focused on Armond White's review, as he is known for seemingly giving any review that goes against the general consenus. (He inexplicably seems in favour of Transformers 2, for instance.) He also doesn't appear to have actually watched the movie (identifying Hamm as a villain.) His negative review was actually predicted by a number of commenters in this earlier article, asking readers to predict where Toy Story 3 would end up on the Tomatometer rating.

It's all very dramatic, with wank in every corner. But of course, the most important Toy Story-related argument is and always will always be: Buzz/Jessie or Woody/Jessie?*


*Anyone's who's seen the movie will know the right answer to this.

From wank_report:

Nurseniknak: Guess what, guys? They're filming Silent Hill 2!
Fans:
Fans: NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

( Read more... )

This Avatar wank brought to you by wank_report.

It was the first day of a shiny new year, full of possibility and promise, when tireanavi created tothehometree, "a community for all those who identify with the Na'vi race in some way - people who are Na'vi on a spiritual or mental level, people who are reincarnated Na'vi, Na'vi souls trapped in human forms, people who worship the great Eywa, etcetera."

And for a time, love and acceptance swept across the land. Cake, glitter, ponies! But alas, the peace was eventually shattered.

By a Swedish, bipedal wolf manta ray.

( Read more... )

It was a frosty morning on the 29th of December when I was surprised to find Holmes already awake and active, pacing back and forth in a show of nervous energy before the hearth in a manner that suggested he had been waiting for me to arise for some time. Upon catching sight of me, he immediately presented me with a single piece of paper, now fraying slightly about the lines upon which it had been carefully folded.

( Come, Watson -- the game's afoot! )

( The Actual Wank )

From wank_report:
Genevieve Koski, writing for the A.V. Club, offers her opinion on a recent screening of Ghostbusters for Better Late Than Never, the feature in which authors who never experienced some element of the pop culture of the past go back and review it with the jaded eyes of the present. Her opinion, of course, is negative.

( Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. )
...I don't have to warn for Ghostbusters spoilers, do I?

This is an excruciatingly slow week at work and I am flat out amazed that someone else hasn't posted this yet. I was going to wait for someone else to take it but right now I need something to do and this is some spectacular wank. I first got it from Cleo's twitter, but it's a hell of a lot bigger now.

Rachel Lefevre played Victoria in the Twilight movie. She was generally regarded as acceptable in her acting and well-liked as a person.

Then Summit suddenly announces that they've recast the role. Why? Because at some point Rachel signed up for a ten-day shooting gig that overlapped with the Eclipse shooting schedule.

Shit hits the fan at record speed. Here we have Rachel's response. It's basically "What the FUCK?!" but in very polite terms. It was followed very recently by Summit's response to her, which is basically "We totally didn't just dump the bitch over ten days in some other film. Oh, wait, yes we did."

We also have a pithy little article from eonline laying out the possible (rather nasty) logic behind the move.

Oh, and lion_lamb wanks away. Interestingly, there's a lot of "FUCK YOU SUMMIT" but some folks taking the studio's side, a bit of tinhatting and ample fapping. I didn't venture all the way through the thousand comments, but I'm quite sure there's more.

I'm sure there is much more coverage and much more wank, people should feel free to draw it to my attention. Also, there will probably be plenty more wank to come. Thanks to cleolinda for dropping most of these links on her twitter.

ETA 1: Courtesy of Cleo's twitter again: Summit responds to the fan reaction. Ohh, there are going to be good times.

ETA 2: GAME ON! This update brought to you by eilisliana

Note: This wank is from 2004. I figured that since F_W is moderated, the mods can decide if the wank is too dated or whatever. If you are reading this now please enjoy the wank.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to The Dark Crystal fandom!

The Dark Crystal, being an old, small fandom has it's share of BNFs. One such BNF is John, author of the fanfic un-official Dark Crystal sequel The Crystal of Truth, which, incidentally, he tried to pitch to Henson and was rejected. You can only imagine what he thinks of the new up-coming Dark Crystal sequel. But this wank isn't about that.

Needless to say, since John is a BNF, many fans shower praise unto his manuscript. Me? I couldn't even make it to page 20.

One fine May afternoon, durendalmac posts his take of The Crystal of Truth. And no sir, he didn't like it. In fact, he finds it "an utter desecration of The Dark Crystal. It's predictable, trite, cliched, the tone is completely different, and it craps on the grave of Jim Henson."

John replies civilly, my personal favorite comment of his being "Personally, I'd love to see M. Night Shyamalan tackle [A Dark Crystal sequel]. I LOVE his work, and I have the impression his writing style would be a perfect fit."

I laughed until I remembered this was 2004, and that M. Night had not yet subjected us to The Village or Lady in the Water. But he did subject us to Signs. Maybe John never saw Signs?

Anyway, John and durendalmac go back and forth a bit, and durendalmac apologizes for some of his wording. The fun REALLY begins when John suggests durendalmac read some of Neil Griffith's fanfics. durendalmac's reaction is "MY CHILDHOOD!"

And then the lurkers come to support John in email!

Soon, everyone got distracted by something shiny and shut up.

I love my little fandom so much!

Taking your children to see Watchmen is child abuse? -found at wank_report

Conservative blogger's "review" starts:

"If you take your kids to see "Watchmen," you're a moron.

If you see it yourself, you're also probably a moron and a vapid, indecent human being. The movie arrives in theaters at Midnight, Thursday Night. It's rated "R"--which should kinda sorta be a hint--but it really deserves an "NC-17," at the very least. And plenty of clueless parents brought their young kids and kept them there for the entire almost three hour "experience" at the screening I attended."

She can't stop bitching that it is somehow being marketed to children because there are people in superhero costumes. Or something. Are there like happy meals with these characters or something? I honestly don't have a clue about the marketing and am curious now. There's a video game--but like the movie it is rated for Mature Audiences Only.

There are comments over and over that Debbie doesn't get it. SHE DOES THOUGH! IN ALL CAPS! AND WE'RE ALL MORONS IF WE DISAGREE WITH HER!!

My favorite comment:

"Its not enough to feed children to Molech to satisfy depraved adult desires. No we must show children what adult desires are like when they are young enough before they are fed to Molech."

Yesssss, it makes them more tender to traumatize them first.

Also her photo scares the bejeezus out of me. Instead of ponies with hateful eyes watching me sleep, I am sure I will now see her in my nightmares.

ETA:
She posted about Watchmen again and the screed is even less comprehensible. One of her commenters calls himself "Uncle Joe McCarthy." D: The Godwins breakage is coming up like kudzu.

But a lot to do with wank.

Approximately seven trillion Batman communities have sprung up on LJ since The Dark Knight came out, including several devoted (ostensibly) to the funny, like fuckyou_batman, agents_of_chaos, and batman_lulz; these join a pre-existing Batman-funny comm, capslock_batman. They all look for lullz in different ways - fuckyou_batman by mocking fangirls, batman_lulz by posting endless macros, and so on. Soooo...what happens when two or more of these communities intersect?

That's right. Splat.

So, omguxie, industrious little joker fangirl, purveyor of lullz, and wanker that she is, has created a couple of these communities: batman_lulz and joker_lesbians (peep the macro of the Joker eating the pink taco). And her wank gets everywhere. (Tasty amuse-bouche wank to whet your appetite: You can only join if you're a big enough lesbian for omguxie! EDIT BAHLEETED!)

It starts with now-deleted spamming by anonymous agents of chaos (but not necessarily agents_of_chaos). Apparently, the spammers used all-caps; clearly - CLEARLY - this means they are from capslock_batman. Omguxie makes accusations to this effect. Capslock_batman, in turn, do not appreciate this. Omguxie comes to the post to CAPS THEM BACK. Much advising to CALM DOWN IT'S JUST THE INTERNET occurs. I just wonder how they can tell who's yelling and who's just, you know, posting in capslock.

But wait! That's only part of the wank!

Meanwhile, back at the batman_lulz, "The Joker" posts an advisory warning to his fangirls. This is not funny enough for the lulzians, no! Cue 593 comments, at this posting (edit: 670 now), split between playing along, telling him he's a lamer, and posting macros.

Lots and lots of macros. A good portion of these by omguxie: the rare sight of a mod spamming her own community.

SEE! Omguxie charm a steadfast FY_Ber with her IRL cuteness!

WITNESS! The Scarecrow's arrival!

GASP! As they fail at eating their own!

Over at batmanholyland omguxie has her own tag ("omguxie is annoying and we hate her"), but sadly, they're smart enough to friendslock everything. Don't you hate it when the wankers keep their wank to themselves?

ETA: They macro some more on the fourth page. And by "some more" I mean "a whole hell of a lot". WARNING: SOME IMAGES IN THE EDITED-IN LINKS VERY NSFW.

ETA II: Capslock_batman already disliked batman_lulz (and it's mutual), though I'm unable to discern exactly where this originally started; and omguxie is something of a modwhore.

Fanboys are out in force on Rotten Tomatoes. There are six bad reviews of The Dark Knight posted, and each one has hundreds of comments, mostly consisting of "**** YOU, YOU PRETENTIOUS DOUCHE! I HATE NEW YORKERS!" Four (or five—I'm too lazy to check) of the six reviews are from NY, you see. Here are the posted blurbs from reviews:

"The Dark Knight is noisy, jumbled, and sadistic." 194 comments

"This movie is too in love with itself to make you love it." 334 comments

"This movie is grim and jammed together. The narrative isn't shaped coherently to bring out contrasts and build toward a satisfying climax. The Dark Knight is constant climax; it's always in a frenzy, and it goes on forever." 535 comments WARNING: alleged spoilers in the review.

"Visually impressive, but any hack can do a halfway decent job with trailer-ready tangents. Not everyone can push the genre forward, and the fact that Nolan's padded popcorn flick isn't the streamlined masterpiece it could have been is a real buzzkill." 200 comments

"Plodding, puffed-up kitsch mistaking itself for profound psycho noir that the source material won't support." 122 comments WARNING: alleged spoilers in the review.

"The generation of consumers who swallow this pessimistic sentiment can’t see past the product to its debased morality. Instead, their excitement about The Dark Knight’s dread (that teenage thrall with subversion) inspires their fealty to product." 201 comments

Everyone's a jerk! Yay!

Wall-E: Fascist propaganda machine or cute robot movie? You decide.

Dearest, beloved, Fandom Wank.

I know you were looking forward to great excitement today. Some of you said words to me that indicated you anticipated fiery 'judgement' upon those who remained fresh and dewey white, those you call n00bs.

Anyway, you got today instead.

Stop anticipating things, we'll just break your hearts.

Sincerely,

Sepia P. Magpie, Esq.



PS: Use this post to reflect on how you could be better people. Or just fuck around in the comments.

A recent ohnotheydidnt post features a list of the most misogynistic movies of the decade. On cue, the wank commences, with responses ranging from "feminists suck" to "I'm not a feminist but..." to "this is kinda silly but I agree with a few points" to "it's just entertainment lol".

Top threads of wank:

( Pretend I put something witty here. )

In conclusion: I needed a reason to not see Superbad?

Someone named "AnneOBrienRice" tells the imdb boards they're interrogating Luther from the wrong perspective.


"Does anyone know of a good film about Luther that shows the Catholic side of the issue, the tensions and agonies that those opposing Luther endured? If anyone knows of such a work, I'd love to hear about it. You can email me at anneobrienrice@mac.com. Maybe i should write such a film, or a novel about it. Thanks."


The people of imdb completely fail to notice the user name, or if they do, they can't be bothered to give a damn (no pun intended). To be fair, if "AnneOBrienRice" is indeed a troll, she's an absolute genius at copying the real thing's writing style. Her review of Sweeney Todd (which currently happens to sit on the movie's main page) tells us:

"A Conventicle of Geniuses Came Together Here. And this conventicle has brought us a glistening and irresistible nightmare. There are delicious Dickensian overtones throughout, and the look of the film itself is poetically potent."


Yeah.

Anyway, people aren't too happy about "Anne" siding with the poor oppressed catholics, and wank ensues.


"My, my I love the smell of revisionism in the morning."

"Where in the Bible does it say that only something explicitly taught in the Bible is true?"

"Did Catholics fight and persecute too?
Yes, but it wa spurely defensive."

"You obviously have no idea what being 'Christian' is. Its not about getting along for the sake of gettiong along."


And my favorite quote for today:

"Luther was a revolutionary. What is Christ-like about that?"


UPDATE: The Sweeney Todd review is linked from AnneRice.com. It's her!

This is pretty much one-sided wanking, but it's still amusing.

I don't know if you guys heard, but "Crash" beat out "Brokeback Mountain" (among others) for the Best Picture Oscar on Sunday.

BBM's fan comm, wranglers, wasn't very happy about that.

They've basically been on a week-long whine-fest, starting with the Official Oscar Post when the winner was announced. (Highlights: "But...our fandom's bigger!" and "2006 will be remembered as the year the wrong film won." Because, y'know, that never happens.)

There's a bunch of Crash backlash here. Note the OP's icon. My personal favorite comment is the call to boycott the movie. For...winning, I guess. How dare they?

The wankiest post in the comm right now is calling an Ebert article on the win "hateful". The OP recommends writing Ebert nasty letters, despite his starting the article by saying that BBM was a "great film" and that he'd have been happy if either one won. Every thread in that post is a gem, starting with "I bet he's fat". Noteworthy is the CAPS of RAGE comment by the OP which asks (rhetorically, I assume) "How can the MOST decorated film in cinematic history be IGNORED by the Academy." Because it turns out the best director and best screenplay Oscars are just chocolate in a gold wrapping. Whoops!

I also like the last thread, again by that post's OP. Just think of all the Brokeback Mountain jokes in the media. No one would have the gall to parody any other film to this extent. Soooo apparently that's the first movie catchphrase ever to hit the national lexicon. Oh, by the way. It turns out that I'm the king of the world, and don't call me Shirley. I've got to wrap this up anyway, I have Thumb Wars in my DVD player.

Seriously, guys. You get marginalized enough. You don't need to make shit up.

If you want to look around those posts and the comm itself, there's stuff about how unethical the Crash producers were for sending out screener DVDs to Academy members, and how BBM has the "bravest sex scenes ever committed to film" (er, QaF anyone?). Basically, any post since Sunday with more than ten comments has the good stuff.


I predict they'll be gloating about this wire story before the day is out. Assuming LJ is up before then.

EDIT: OK, maybe not, but instead you can read Proulx's thoughts on the Oscars. (She wrote the short story, for those who don't know.) At least now we know where Wranglers got it from.

(If you are looking for smart judging based on merit, skip the Academy Awards next year and pay attention to the Independent Spirit choices.)

Except that leaves out studio films which can also be good...? Perhaps she thinks that because BBM actually won best feature at those awards.

When Jack Nicholson said best picture went to Crash, there was a gasp of shock, and then applause from many - the choice was a hit with the home team since the film is set in Los Angeles. It was a safe pick of "controversial film" for the heffalumps.

Huh.