Guilty Pleasures
Everybody has them. They're the things you like but don't feel comfortable sharing in polite company. John Nolte over at Big Hollywood shares his. A snowed-in Country Punk starts a pretty good list of his own. Here's mine (for today I'm going to stick with film and I'm not going to waste bandwidth by including clips. You guys know how to find them):
Van Helsing: Yeah, I know. Shitty movie. Lousy dialog, crappy special effects, a lead actress who keeps forgetting her accent. Deep Rising is ten times better for 1/3 the budget. But...I love it and I'd watch a sequel in a heartbeat.
Doc Hollywood: And I'd be lying if I said that Julie Warner's breasts weren't a big part of the attraction.
Demolition Man: John Nolte can talk about 80's Stallone all he wants. This one has them beat. And yes, in the future all restaurants will be Taco Bell.
Resident Evil Trilogy: I've got to hand it to John. He's right on with this one. I don't know if it's the Mila Jovovich factor or what, but this series worked for me. I was disappointed that Sienna Guillory didn't come back for the third one, though.
The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions: Well, all right, not so much Revolutions. But Reloaded rocks.
Harry Potter I & II: As geeky as LAGuy can be about Lost, I can be that and more about Harry Potter. Say what you want about the first two movies - hell, say what you want about the whole series. Doesn't matter. I own them and I even watch them when they're on TV. With commercials. Yes, the movies aren't what they might have been, but those kids could not have asked for a better person to help them get started than Chris Columbus.
So that's my short list of Guilty Pleasures. I'm sure I'll come up with more.
What's on your list?
posted by VermontGuy @ 4:20 PM
9 Comments:
I don't believe in guilty pleasures. If you like something, you like something. Otherwise, quite a few of my entires on this blog would constitute guilty pleasures.
By the way, I'm a fan of Doc Hollywood too, though I don't see how anyone can approve of the Matrix sequels. (I do agree Reloaded is better than Revolutions.)
As for Van Helsing, I gave it the Biggest Blown Opportunity of 2004 award, at
http://pajamaguy.blogspot.com/2005/02/film-year-in-review-2004.html
Here's what I wrote:
Stephen Sommers, who made The Mummy and its sequel, got the chance to run wild with three of the greatest monsters in the history of movies, and came up with the most ridiculous film of the year. I'm going to try to recount, as best I can, the plot of Van Helsing, but it may just have been a bad dream. Count Dracula has three wives (?), who lay thousands of eggs (??). These baby draculas hatch but don't live very long so the Count needs to capture Frankenstein so he can learn the secret of life and use it on the dracula babies (???). While the wives can be killed by normal dracula means (holy water, stakes), the Count is invulnerable to everything except a werewolf (????). Though one might think this would mean the Count would keep away from werewolves, in fact, he keeps one around, and isn't worried because he has a serum nearby that will turn the werewolf back into a man if there's any trouble (?????). Now this is mostly backstory, I haven't even gotten to Van Helsing, who's hired by a multi-religious consortium to kill supernatural monsters around the world. In addition, Kate Beckinsale puts on such a bad accent it manages to make her look ugly.
Wow. I'm not even sure I should post mine publicly. This could be googled someday! So let's just say that on my shelf of CDs, if you dig past all the prog-rock and Bob Dylan and Deep Purple and Queen, you might find some pop singers whose first names are Barry or Shania. (Neil too, but I don't really feel guilty about that, since I just like his 1970s stuff.) And in addition to Lost and Buffy and Firefly and Babylon 5, I have been known to watch Gilmore Girls.
Now L.A. Guy will change his mind and agree that there really are guilty pleasures. Vermont Guy's are cool by comparison! The Taco Bell thing totally redeemed Demolition Man in my opinion.
On the theory that confession is good for the soul;
The Duran Duran oeuvre
Adam Ant too
The original V TV series
Friday the 13th TV Series (featuring Jack Marshak)
The Man With Two Brains.
The 2d (and only the 2d) Pirates of the Caribbean
LAGuy - No question, Sommers screwed the pooch of what could have been a billion dollar franchise. Any you mean to say that you have no entertainment likes that you're even a little embarrassed to admit to?
LK - Buffy and Firefly are way too cool to be guilty pleasures. And I'll get to my music choices later but Barry and Shania (and Neil) are on my list, too.
NEG - I LOVE Friday the 13th - the series. Great choice! And I agree that the 2nd POC movie is a guilty pleasure.
So, who's next? The confessional is open.
VermontGuy - my stupid work computer won't let me sign in
I don't understand the dislike for the "Underworld" series. Okay, I haven't watched the third one yet (it's on my shelf - got it for Christmas), but the first and second are very entertaining, imho.
Sure the acting is not the greatest, for the most part - but that is almost a badge of honor for an over-the-top action monster flick.
NEG - I don't see how POTC II is a guilty pleasure - it was I think the highest grossing of the very successfull trilogy. It's my favorite to watch, even though it leaves so many questions open at the end (to be answered badly by POTC III).
But I share "Man With Two Brains"! My favorite Steve Martin after The Jerk. Also, "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" is way under-rated.
Others on my list:
Tron (there's a sequel coming - :shiver:)
Unbreakable
Hulk (again, don't understand the hate for this film - terrific effects, and great performance by Nick Nolte)
To give an example, not long ago I wrote about how much I liked The Man Who Knew Too Little. This blog is filled with plenty of examples of stuff like without major critical or commercial approval.
By the way, Denver Guy, I think I wrote something a while ago on how Unbreakable has become the "cool" picture to like if you're a fan of M. Night.
Abba -- took me weeks to convince a friend who is well aware of my distaste for musicals that I really, really wanted to see Mamma Mia.
Pretty Woman -- can't explain it other than to say that I have a huge crush on Julia Roberts circa 1990.
True Romance -- I am the only person I've ever known who uses quotes from this movie in regular conversation. Nobody ever gets the references.
Those may be guilty pleasures in Queens, but Abba is one of the best selling bands of all time while Mamma Mia and Pretty Woman are two of the biggest worldwide blockbusters. Okay, maybe it's a bit embarrassing for a man to like them, but it wasn't all women that made them hits.
Meanwhile, True Romance is a cult hit beloved by many--the scene with Walken and Hopper alone is quoted by hipsters around the world. That's as good as it's gonna get and it won't ever get that good again.
Is True Romance a guilty pleasure? I thought the early Tarentino stuff was still considered cool.
And while I can't quote it the way I can quote Fletch or the early John Hughes movies, I think it's clearly a quotable movie.
Oddly, the quote I usually associate with it isn't in the movie. I saw it with a friend who's a lawyer (Bruce, a common friend of mine and LAGuy's). At one point, Bronson Pinchot is speeding on Mulholland, gets pulled over, has a fight with his girlfriend about who will hold the big bag of cocaine, and in the fight the bag explodes. The policeman walks up to Pinchot in his convertable, covered with white powder, and stares at him. At this point, my friend commented, as matter-of-fact as could be, "That counts as probable cause." Somehow I remember that line more than the actual dialogue....
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