Watching Spartacus makes me feel like a man

Watching episode 3 of Sparticus via Netflix streaming. I initially clicked on it because the box cover was all like GRRRRR! and I was all like "why's Kevin Federline so clean and angry?" After 2 episodes of Spartacus I have found there are many reasons why Kevin Federline is angry and the show is built around him working out that anger.

There are things notable about the Spartacus television series and I would like to share my 3 episodes of experience with you.

1. Spartacus has the worst special effects that I have ever seen in a professional media production.

I can tell that the producers of Spartacus were challenged with producing 13 episodes of 300 with the budget of 13 episodes of Sesame Street. Instead of playing to the low budget strengths with clever editing and scripting around budget constraints, Spartacus does a bunch of CGI stuff but just stops rendering when the VFX checks start to bounce.

The sky looks like a water color painting and the characters have terrible green screen artifacts around them. Certain spots look like someone's playing a game of You're in the Movies.

2. Spartacus is naked. So are his friends and enemies. So are the characters he has yet to meet.

Try as I might I have yet to see the member of Spartacus, every other inch of his body is permanently imprinted in my mind. As for the rest of the cast, yeah hung or not hung they are on display in about half of the scenes they are in. In my analysis of Love and Other Drugs, I mentioned that every time Anne Hathaway acted she had to show a boob. In Spartacus every line of dialogue must be matched with a close up of the characters frank and beans. Any nonverbal action a character has must be paired with a butt shot.

3. Spartacus is visceral.

Visceral: Having to do with the response of the body as opposed to the intellect, as in the distinction between feeling and thinking.

If I was a wild animal I probably wouldn't make it through a complete episode of of Spartacus without dying of some combination violence and some more basic animal need. Probably 75% of the 3 episodes are either fighting or lovemaking with a equal amount of screaming in each. The pairings do not discriminate among genders, which makes me wonder if this show is produced to help GLAAD or to spite it.

Despite the accents (which range from meh to terrible) and the iambic pentameter, there is no plot to Spartacus aside from revenge and hostility. If you can follow the the drama and subtext of a dogfight then you will have no problems keeping up with Spartacus. If anyone says they are watching this show for something other than the dirty stuff then I would advise you to not believe their lies and report them to the nearest authority.

4. Xena Warrior Princess is in this

She is getting older but it's good to see her working again.

5. They seriously just did the screen split trick to make a bunch more trumpet players.

SLEEPY CRICKET did you make this? Seriously you need to tell me if this is something you shot with your digital camera.

I WILL NO LONGER be passionate about The Room

I think I'm going to start doing some of my posts in series, this is the second entry in the I WILL NO LONGER series where I give up stuff in order to make my life more livable.

I WILL NO LONGER be bitter about the movie project

These probably won't be funny. Sorry in advance

"Have you heard of this terrible movie called The Room"

- Me, every conversation for the past year and a half.

The Room is a movie made almost entirely by one man who does not understand how a movie is made. The failures are on every level starting with premise (his, based on a play/novel or something), script (his), setting (a hastily put together apartment stage), direction (his direction, using two very different types of cameras with little consistency of focus, white balance or even resolution), and of course acting (with him as the lead and a bunch of the most random people ducking for cover throughout the movie).

The guy is Tommy Wiseau and the movie is The Room. I am not here to talk about the movie, I am here to talk about my love for the movie and how I finally learning to let it go.

THE ROOM TRAILER

Multiply that trailer out by about 50 times with 3 and a half softcore scenes and you have The Room. But again, we are not here to talk about The Room, we are here to talk about my love of The Room.

I heard about The Room from an entertainment weekly article and used a file sharing website to obtain a copy of it for myself. I played some random iPhone game during the first screening, and with no other plans for the rest of the evening I played it again as soon as it was done. It was terrible, from top to bottom. And as an amateur video person (oh you'll be seeing some stuff in the future) I can appreciate terrible. In fact I believe in a couple years that the population as a whole will acknowledge the fact that crap is the new awesome. The Room was a special kind of terrible, not just in quantity but in caliber. It is almost hypnotic in its awfulness.

So I watched it probably 5 times on my own, then I roped my friend Eric into it. Despite being very resistant to it at first he eventually watched it and felt like we could contribute something to cult of The Room.

The Room 2: Even Roomier

That. Just. Happened. I'm sorry if you hit the play button, but believe me that it hurt me more than it hurt you. Most of the lines were ripped from the movie, because while I'm not a writer, english is my first language so I couldn't replicate Tommy's style without copying him verbatim. This required a lot of viewings, most of them alone in my mother's basement, which even Tommy Wiseau would say is the worst way to watch The Room. Oh and I just found out the video got mentioned poorly in a Times UK article:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6905117.ece

So from then on every person I would tell about The Room I could also give proof of my love of The Room by telling them about my homemade sequel. Eric and I planned a sequel to Bloodsport but we couldn't find the love and I couldn't get Jean Claude's abs if my life depended on it.

Tommy Wiseau singing his version of "A Whole New World"

This valentines day I took a spur of depression trip to Chicago to see "The Room" with introduction and follow up Q&A with Tommy Wiseau. It was nuts. Sadly I had been up since 5AM that day so I didn't stay after to shake his hand and tell him he's my favorite customer. I ended up falling asleep in a gas station somewhere in Indiana on the way back. Briefly that night/morning I thought I was going to be raped, but no matter how hard I blew my whistle no one came.

Enlisting some friends and enemies, I've driven over 1320 miles in various subsequent trips to see The Room in the same grody theater. Here is a pic from the latest trip:

The Dark Side of The Room

Despite the awfulness of The Room and the insanity of its front man Tommy Wiseau, every viewing or discussion I have about movie leaves me with an increasingly hollow feeling. Where excitement used to be now there is exasperation, and I think its mainly due to my tank being empty in regards to the movie. I've said everything I need or can say on the subject. When Sleepy Cricket butchers a Room quote in my general direction I now just roll my eyes instead of trying to salvage the scene that he is trying to recreate.

When he got me riled up to film another sequel/prequel to the movie (and grow out the beard again) I did so with my usual (slightly obsessed) determination but without the passion. Days later when Sleepy Cricket dropped the idea I was actually happy, unlike my feelings about his other aborted video project he's wrapped me into.

The Room is his now. Literally The Room is his, I gave him my copy of the DVD and I don't plan on seeing it again. I believe SLEEPY CRICKET and the other 30 people I've infected with The Room will be good stewards of the film. They will spread the movie's legacy like a tapeworm spreads its tapeworm babies. Or are they clones? I don't know how tapeworms work and my Internet is being awful so I'll leave it to you to look up.

Finally I think I'm done with The Room, not just to me being over it and SLEEPY CRICKET taking the reigns, but because the bros are starting to catch on to it. I have always been a trend setter, not that people look up to me because people are naturally disposed to hating me (it's a family thing). But me and my fellow "trend setter/people haters" have brought The Room into their lives, fallen in love, learned and fallen out of love with it. Its time for it to be passed on to the bros. They will run it into the ground and I will be able to move on. Maybe this time I won't move on to some fringe movie, maybe I'll move onto something real. Like a skill or talent. Maybe I'll move on to the "Piano for Dummies" computer software I bought last month. Or maybe I'll move on to a similar waste of time such as this blog.

Alright I'm done. Done with this post. Done with The Room.

Take it SLEEPY CRICKET, it's all yours.