The worst movie

Ever since I saw S.O.S: Summer of Sam (thanks for the initials, film execs, that makes the title so much catchiera and hip), "A Spike Lee Joint" (because saying 'film' or 'production' is so pedestrian), it has held the coveted title of Worst Movie I Have Ever Seen.

I feel like the talent in it (Adrien Brody and Mira Sorvino, and John Leguizamo, if you call him talent... I haven't seen anything like it from him) signed up because it's Spike Lee, assuming it would be good or at least have that 'artistic' quality to it that gets the critics drooling when Joe Moviegoer wonders why he wasted his 8 bucks.

It lives up to neither. I'm pretty sure the critics didn't like it, and I sure hated it. I gave it a chance; I watched all 142 minutes of it, thinking there must be some shred of goodness coming to lift it from the yawning abyss of its own unpleasantness. 142 minutes I will never, ever get back. The only good thing about this movie is that Mira Sorvino is an incredibly beautiful woman (WHY, Mira??? Why would you waste yourself in THIS?!). Everything else is a bad mixture of cliches.

All that is leading up to the party I attended last night. In lieu of reading in preparation for my Cicero final (pfft, who needs to be prepared for final exams) I went out with Ryan, Dustin and several other Classics students and we ended up at the party of Andrew, another classics grad. This was the weirdest party I've ever been to. A real contender for that WMIHES title, threatening to dethrone Summer of Sam, is apparently known as Shaolin Soccer. It was playing with the sound off, which didn't matter because it's subtitled in English. As far as I can tell, the plot revolves around soccer players with magical, Matrix/video game-style powers, a bread-baking woman who is sad because her shoes are broken and cries about it (her tears then fall into the dough, ruining the bread, apparently, which starts the vicious crying cycle over again...), and the final showdown vs (I'm not making this up) Team Evil. As you may have guessed, what keeps SOS firmly seated on its throne is that Shaolin Soccer, like so many before it, has that odd "this is so bad it's funny" quality to redeem it.

This movie we watched when we were not outside watching people basically twirling fiery batons of different lengths ranging up to bo staff proportions. Or watching the reactions of people drinking the homemade mystery beer, whose ingredients I was never actually given an actual list of. Or watching Mr. Blond Dreadlocks, higher than Bob Marley on a trip to Amsterdam, drop lit cigarettes on the floor. Or listening to the girl tell Ryan that he should get high by dropping acid, instead of with Robitussin because it's BETTER FOR YOUR HEALTH. Also, if I heard her correctly, she got high on Robitussin as a kid and at some point got a tattoo while under the influence without realizing what she was doing.

So basically last night took all the things that were at the top of my list of Weird Stuff I Never Expected to Happen in Grad School (or Anywhere Else, Really) and smashed it together into one huge ball of oddity. I guess that's what happens when you throw together the vastly disparate groups of Classicists, bus drivers, and (apparently) fire jugglers.

And to think I almost stayed in the library reading about Cicero.

Song of the night is Seal's "Love's Divine". I only know two songs by Seal, but they've convinced me I need to buy some CDs and get some more. He's got a great voice and some great songwriting talent.