The Progressive Cinema Scorecard: Creepshow 2

The Progressive Cinema Scorecard: Creepshow 2

• Being a sequel to an actually good scary movie and keeping the EC Comics motif. = +10pts
• Giant balls on the tween who does not run away screaming at the site of the obviously demonic periodical man. = +5pts
• The writer who wrote that above line. = -10pts (To be applied to a personal scorecard.)
• Really lame "magic hands" move of creepy periodical man. = -3pts
• Lack of star-power evident in the opening credits. A complete reversal of Hollywood's view that the original Creepshow was a good idea and a movie to be seen in. = -10pts.
• Exact opposite of creepy synth/keyboard solo during credits. = -5pts
• Not being directed by George Romero. (Despite what the poster art would have you believe.) = -8pts
• Utterly terrible between story animation sequences. = -5pts
• Opening scene of old white man singing "Jimmy Crack Corn" while dusting off a giant Indian Smoking man in front of his store. (In 1987 = 0pts, In 2013 = -17pts) = -17pts
• Old white lady making fun of freeloading (really poor) Native Americans. (In 1987 = +1pts, In 2013 = -20pts) = -19pts
• The look of confusion on the white guys face at receiving turquoise necklaces in lieu of cash. = 0pts (But kind of hilarious.)
• The dialogue. = -3pts
• The "You're disgusting" line uttered after obnoxious wailing fat guy grabs his crotch and tells the old man to "put this in your mouth." = +8pts
• Unintentional (one hopes) Diet Pepsi appearance at awkward moment. = +2pts
• HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT IS FUCKING IRISH ACTOR HOLT McCALLANY PLAYING THE LONG HAIRED NATIVE AMERICAN ROBBER. (In 1987 = nobody gave a shit, in 2013 = -20pts) = -20pts
• Poorly dealt issues of race this movie thinks it is treating with respect. (In 1987 = +5pts, In 2013 = -25pts) = -20pts
• Ability of previously petrified Smoking Indian to operate contemporary technology, like televisions and garage door openers. = +7pts
• Telling the petrified Smoking Indian covered in blood that he is not alive and can't be alive and then wasting time shooting him. = +3pts
• Troubling implications of Smoking Indian scalping another Native American as revenge for killing white people. (In 1987 = +10pts (Irony!), In 2013 = -20pts (Racist!)) = -10pts
• Yes, I'm still here not-scary-cartoon-man. It'll take more than a little 80's cultural insensitivity to get me to stop watching this clearly inferior sequel. = +10pts (For doing me the courtesy of making sure I'm still awake.)
• Um...spoke too soon. The Raft freaked my shit out bad when I was a kid and is one of Stephen King's best stories. = +20pts
• Douchbag teens yelling at each other to "pass the weed." Oh, these kids can't die fast enough. Already much better. = +5pts
• The blonde douchbag's hilarious yellow bikini bottoms. (Likely a joke in 1987 = +5pts, In 2013, still a joke, but funnier in 2013 = +8pts) = +13pts
• Here's a great idea for you: Drive 50 miles out into the middle of nowhere, take a swim in what looks like an abandoned rock quarry, and leave your car back on the "beach" with the keys in the ignition and the radio still blasting. What could go wrong? = +15pts
• Watching duck be mysteriously pulled into the water and still swimming in the general direction of it. = +5pts
• Who took a shit in the lake? = +3pts
• DON'T TOUCH THE SHIT IN THE WATER!! = +10pts
• Killing the virgin girl first. = +15pts (You know, because it's not typical in these kinds of movies... Not because it's cool to kill virgins...)
• Threatening to punch a girl who is upset after watching her friend dissolve into a glop of lake poo. = -5pts
• Foot-to-face. Best. Raft. Death. Ever. = +25pts
• Um...non-consensual molestation while a a pervy slick of acidic poo watches. = -20pts (in any decade)
• Taunting slick of acidic poo. = +5pts
• Poo wave!! Who's laughing now, beyotch! = +10pts
• There's nothing like the smell of a rich white lady running over a homeless black man in the morning. = -10pts
• Car phones with actual cords attached to them. = (In 1987 = +10pts, In 2013 = +15pts) +25pts
• Refusing to give a ride to the black man you ran over with your car even after he's managed to track you down several miles later. = -5pts
• "Thanks for the ride, lady." = +5pts (Still makes me laugh.)
• Now I know where Quintin Tarantino got the inspiration for Django Unchained. = +3pts
• Why would, what clearly appears to be a zombie, after being mutilated, suddenly fall over after getting shot a few times by a gun? = -2pts
•   Accidentally run over a homeless black man, once? Shame on you. Purposely shoot him six times and then run over him again, repeatedly? Well..shame on you again. (In Regan's 1987 = +10pts, In 2013, -20pts) = -10pts
•   Overallpoints to be earned through unarftful commentary of important issues relevant to 1987. = 0pts (a wash)

Progressive Cinema Scorecard Total:  +17 points

Once again the scorecard proves that the closer to 0 a movie actually is, the less value there is in literally watching it. Had this movie not had The Raft at its center, and had it not been chock-full of shoehorned metaphors of a dead decade, it might have been not bad. But, as it is, it is not good.

The Progressive Cinema Scorecard: The Fog

  The Progressive Cinema Scorecard: The Fog

• For thinking a movie based on scary fog would be a good idea. = -15pts.
• For being directed by John Carpenter. (Back when "directed by John Carpenter" actually meant something other than eliciting a feeling of bemused nostalgic disapointment) = +40 pts
• For casting Alfred Hitchcock and dressing him like the sailor guy from The Simpsons. = +20pts
• Wait, that's not Alfred Hitchcock that's (a drunk) John Houseman (talking to what looks like a couple of Native American kids. What the Fuck is going on)! = -21pts
• For reminding me who John Houseman was and how many movies he was in that I forgot about. = +6pts
• Wait, those are white kids from the 70's, not Native Americans? Where are their parents? = A wash.
• A drunk priest! Played by Hal Holbrook! Before he married a Designing Woman! = +5pts
• Ringing pay phones as a device of terror. = -3pts
• Holy shit! Lights turned on! = -5pts
• I thought the title of this movie was The Fog, not Maximum Overdrive. = -5pts
• De-li-laaaaaah. = +3pts
• Casting the dude who played that dad of that chick who killed herself at the beginning of the first Leathal Weapon. = +5pts
• Jaime Lee Curtis! (Weird, she looks both really young and really old for her age.) = +15pts
• Operating a radio show in a lighthouse? Best job ever! = +3pts
• A fucking Pirate Ship? = -5pts
• Man, those pirates sure are meaner than the ones from the Caribbean. = +7pts
• Ah, the 70's... Back when you could pick up a strange chick on the side of the road around midnight, have some crazy nothing blow out your window, and be back at his place boning within the hour. We miss you 70's! Call us! = +10pts
• Shame on you John Carpenter. I know you like to score your own movies, but recylcing the Halloween music only in a different key and played backwards? That's weak sauce, even for you. = -15pts
• The set for the Antonio Bay celebration. = -8pts (2 year-old B-day parties have better set-ups.)
• Janet Leigh! Film geeks from the 70's must have shot their wads. = +5pts
• Do women even use curling irons any more? = +2pts
• Hal Holbrook reading a book...badly. Terryfying! = -10pts
• Polite ghost leper pirates?! Why not! = +10pts
• If another character stops the movie to tell a personal anecdote, I'm going to flip my shit. = -10pts
• That leaking plank of wood scene and the creepy voice. First legitamatly scary thing all movie. = +10pts
• (Potential scoring oppourtunity. If Andy dies?  Limitless. If he lives? Missed oppuortunity.)
• Presumably dead body(s) moving underneath a white sheets.= +8pts
• Horror movie writing 101. Having a character begin any explanation with the phrase, "This is going to sound a little strange..." (Horror set-up: Check. Exposition: Check)= +3pts
• Killing Andy's babtsitter, thus eliminating one person closer to Andy. = +5pts.
• Andy lives. = -10pts
• Delilah whining about Andy over the radio for what seems like HOURS. = -5pts
• Calling yourself a horror movie when nobody of real import dies. = -30pts

+15pts. Pretty close to a goose egg here. Not one of John Carpenter's finest movies. Kind of boring and a bit ridiculous (and not in a good way). In fact, had this film not "allegedly" been directed by John Carpenter it may have been Paranormal Activity bad. Instead, it was only Monkey Shines bad. Still, the scorecard makes all things bearable.

The Progressive Cinema Scorecard: The Howling

The Progressive Cinema Scorecard: The Howling

• For being a werewolf movie that doesn’t revolve around fighting / fucking vampires. = +20pts
• Slim Pickens! = +10pts
• Having the mom from E.T. watch rape porn. = -20pts
• For defining the word 'cynosure' for me. Don't insult my intelligence! I know what cynosure means! It means...Wait, what does it mean again? = -3pts
• For the lady, whose action-figured build, football player of a golden-mustachioed husband, is making us question our sexuality. (In 1981 = -10pts, In 2011 = +15pts) = +5pts
• For trusting the skeezy guy who played Mr. Steed in The Avengers.  = -10pts
• For using a tweaked-out hippie in place of a hunting dog.  = +10pts
• For this greeting of a new character, "Hello, good friend!" That's some nice seamless writing, right there. = -3pts
• For having sex on the beach. (Sand gets everywhere.) = -69pts (heh, heh)
• For Golden-locked husband slapping wife. I'm so over him now. =  -10pts
• For having a Werewolf use a filing cabinet. = +10pts
• Killer pulling out piece of his own brain! = +25pts
• Werewolf Slim Pickens! = +50pts
• Lead turning into the cutest, cuddliest werewolf ever. = +10 pts. 
• On live TV!  = +20pts

Progressive Cinema Scorecard Total = +45pts

For not trying to be anything more than scary entertainment featuring werewolves, not the worse movie the scorecard has ever scored. Joe Dante sneaks in a few jabs about our disaffected, media-saturated society, but the commentary just punctuates the action, rather than overwhelm it, though the years have seriously dated the scary factor of the special effects. While not a scorecard legend, we can't think of a more appropriate icon for the event than a werewolf Slim Pickens.

The Progressive Cinema Scorecard for Paranormal Activity:

• For being a recent horror movie that isn’t a remake and doesn’t revolve around Real World cast-offs being subjected to surgical torture. =+20pts
• For being one of those “found footage” horror movies. =-15pts
• Isn’t there only one camera? How come the POV keeps changing in the kitchen? =-5pts
• So, just so we’re clear here, malevolent poltergeist haunting my girlfriend: Totally within the realm of possibility. Psychics who can perceive and study said poltergeist: An obvious load of bullshit invented to con chicks with serious psychological problems.= -10pts
• For giving us the Paranormal Activity Drinking Game (every time there’s a loud noise from downstairs, take a drink; if Micah or Katie yell “Fuck” right afterwards, chase it with a shot; guaranteed black-out drunk in 90 minutes or less). =+20pts
• For defining “demons” for us. (Because an entire lifetime of living in a Judeo-Christian Western society hasn’t familiarized us with that concept.) = –5pts
• Micah’s “research” on the supernatural consisting of one evening thumbing through My First Picture Book of Demons. = +5pts
• Despite the fact that the psychic explicitly said NOT to use a Ouija board, that’s pretty much Micah’s go-to solution. For showing some real moxy: =+10pts
• For being a willfully obtuse horror movie character. =-15pts
• So basically, Kate and Micah share a living space with something that throws stuff on the floor, leaves faucets running, and makes loud noises while they’re trying to sleep. Maybe I’m alone in this, but I kind of think that in order for the supernatural force in a horror movie to really be effective, it needs to be more threatening than, say, an inconsiderate roommate. =-15 pts
• At a certain point, wouldn’t the logical response to the “haunting” be to shake your first in the direction of the loud thumping, mutter a semi-coherent reprimand, and then roll over and go back to sleep? =-7pts
• Sprinkling talcum powder on the floor to solve your ghost problems. From a comedic perspective—almost off the charts—in this particular instance? =– 7pts
• Claw marks on Micah’s picture; I think we see eye-to-eye on this one, demon. =+18pts
• Attempted ghost rape. =+12pts (For being kind of scary. Not for...you know...the whole rape thing.)
• The end takeaway of this movie being “See the next movie to find out what any of this shit means?” = -25pts

Total points = -19 points
As close to a zero as anything we’ve ever reviewed. Proof that the scorecard never lies! We’re pretty sure that we’ve watched instructional videos on performing simple Excel functions that were more frightening than this film.

The Progressive Cinema Scorecard for Caligula:

• WHAT?!? Netflix doesn't have the uncut 156-minute version on the instant queue? Where's my extra 15 minutes of gratuitous hardcore sex? = -200pts
• Screenplay by Gore Vidal. = +50pts
• Oh, wait. Based on a screenplay by Gore Vidal. = -100pts
• Casting Alex from A Clockwork Orange as Rome's batshit craziest emperor. = +50pts
• Tantalizing us with hot '70s nudity in the opening scene, only to reveal that the parties concerned are brother and sister. = -20pts
• Miles of dangling chain gang slave wang. = +8pts
• Peter O'Toole: the drunken, paranoid, syphilitic grandfather we never had. = +30pts
• Emperor Tiberius's pleasure grotto looks like something out of an Hieronymus Bosch painting. = + 25pts
• Holy shit! Is that a human centipede on Tiberius's stairs? = +20pts
• Drowning the stuck-up butler from Arthur in a glass bathtub. = +10pts
• So, wait, no one's going to... I don't know... remove the the thing you used to strangle the emperor from around his neck before letting everyone know that he's dead?  No? Okay, I guess you guys know what you're doing. = -17pts
• Young, partially nude Helen Mirren. = +100pts
• A doomsday machine with rotating death blades decapitating prisoners buried up to their necks in the floor of the Colosseum? Why the hell not! = +200pts
• The constant, haunting presence of Malcom McDowell's supple, hairless ass cheeks. = -30pts
• Caligula delivers the most enthusiastic thumbs-up in cinematic history following Caesonias...er..."erotic" dance. = +47pts
•  Thank God they've captured the ancient Roman tradition of giving birth upright and cruciform for an audience of hundreds. Just like I always read about in my history texts. = +50pts
• Watching Caligula clumisily dragging his sister's naked corpse up the steps to a statue of Isis and knowing that somehow this scene was supposed to inspire pathos instead of snorting laughter. = -25pts
• Wow. I don't even know how to begin to describe what's going on here. So we've got an imperial orgy including all the wives and daughters of the senate, but the whole scene takes place in a land-bound ivory Roman galley, complete with oarsmen and a formation of Roman legionaries sashaying around it in a choreographed dance number. = +50pts
• Watching the re-enactment of Caligula's "conquest" of Britain. I'm glad the film makers captured the classic Roman strategy of sending their naked soldiers into battle first. You know, to weird the enemy out. = +13pts
• Apparently the password to enter the royal palace was "scrotum." = +10pts
• Gross historical inaccuracy. = -148pts
• Gross historical inaccuracy: = +296pts

Progressive Cinema Scorecard Total: +419

Final Note: An A-list Hollywood cast, hopelessly elaborate '70s art deco Roman sets, and a screenplay that unfolds as though it were written by someone who had read a wikipedia article on ancient Rome while huffing paint out of a sack made of mescaline. Even without the fifteen minutes of completely unnecessary and totally unsimulated sexual perversion, there's more than enough jaw-dropping insanity in this film to make Scorecard history.

The Progressive Cinema Scorecard: Rubber

The Progressive Cinema Scorecard for Rubber:

• Thinking of a movie that will star a vengeful tire with the power to explode people's heads and then actually making it. = +100pts.
• The feng shue value of placing chairs along a dirt road. Or, what the rest of the world calls littering. = -5pts
• Opening scene driving test FAIL. = +10pts
• Accompanying monologue. = +30pts
• Calling your movie a "great film" before it even starts. = -15pts
• The name "Wings Hauser". +10pts
• Watching a resurrected tire learn to roll again. = +20pts.
• Watching a tire hone its killing talents on empty water bottles, scorpions, beer bottles, rusty tin cans, and cute bunnies. = +35 pts
• Holy cow! Fat Neal! = +10pts
• Audience commentary past the meta-intro. You don't need to tell that a tire with psychokinetic powers is cool. I ALREADY KNOW THAT! = -30pts
• Even tires need to sleep. Apparently at night too. Remember that on your next road-trip. = +3pts
• Running over a tire in the middle of the road and then not stopping to see if it's okay. = -10pts
• Having that same tire regain consciousness, track you down for revenge, and explode your head (for you = -50pts) for us.= +75pts
• Being an officer of the law and not stopping to question the only object rolling/fleeing from a crime scene. = -25pts
• Taking a shower in a seedy hotel room and leaving your front door open for just any old tire to roll into. = -40pts
• Having one of your meta-actors comment that the ass of the female who agreed to be naked in your movie is "not that great". = -50pts
• Renting a hotel room to a homicidal tire. = -5pts
• Implied bestiality. = -10pts
• Full frontal tire nudity. = +20pts
• Wearing leather boots to the pool. = -5pts
• Adding exploded bird entrails to your dad's pizza. = -20pts, Doing it in front of a hitchhiking hippie = +20pts (Technically a wash)
• The realization that your meta-experiment isn't playing out the way you planned. = -10pts
• Attempting to befriend an unstable homicidal tire. = -5pts
• Eating the poisoned food of your own trap. = -5pts
• Filming a pile of burning tires. (pre-holocaust = 0pts) Post-holocaust. = -50pts
• Attempting to fool a homicidal tire to its doom by tempting it with a mannequin strapped with explosives that looks nothing like you. = +25pts
• Coming soon: Tricycle. = +10pts

Progressive Cinema Score Total: +83pts

Final Note: In just concept and initial execution alone, this movie started off with a bang. However, the second drags down what could have been a scorecard record.

BREAKING NEWS: Carson Daly Arrested at Mall of America for Harassing Tweens, Demanding to Know Why He’s Not Ryan Seacrest

Bloomington, Mn. -A deranged and obviously confused Carson Daly was arrested this weekend after accosting multiple tween girls, grabbing them by the arm, and shouting at them in front of their mothers, "Why the fuck am I not Ryan Seacrest!"

According to his publicist, Mr. Daly was in Minnesota to cover the unveiling of the world's largest Temperpedic mattress for his late night NBC show, Last Call. Witnesses claim that Mr. Daily became irate at the food court television, which had been running clips from Ryan Seacrest's E! Show E! News, during which Seacrest showed repeated clips of his own moments on the Fox mega-hit American Idol.

“He would start to ask something about the mattress, and then his eyes would float up to the television screen and he’d just sort of trail off,” said Doug McLauren, night manager for Temperpedic’s Mall of America location.

According to eye witnesses, Daly’s erratic behaviour continued for nearly 20 minutes before he threw his Chicken Teriyaki platter at an Auntie Anne's worker and began shouting, "THIS IS BULLSHIT!! THIS IS BULLSHIT!!" to no one in particular.

Representatives of NBC, the network on which Mr. Daly still manages to have a show, were contacted by The Carcast and asked to comment on the story: "We don't do that show any more. Haven't for years. This is NBC, we make television history. We're not in the business of shelling out dreck." After The Carcast sent them tapes of Mr. Daly's most recent show, an episode that featured Mr. Daly and Fred Durst on a camping trip and talking about how great music was in the 90's, the NBC executive responded, "I'll get back to you." The Carcast is awaiting further comment.

An MTV spokesperson gave a similar account, "Carson Daily? Never heard of him. Sounds like a bad porn name. MTV is not in the porn business."

"Techically," the representative added

Eventually Mr. Daly was subdued by mall security guard, Grover Wilkinson who had located an old poster of Tara Reid from one of the many abandoned storefronts now currently occupying the Mall of America.  Mr. Daly was last seen fleeing the Mall with his entourage, singer Fred Durst and former MTV vee-jay Matt Pinefield. There is no knowledge to his current whereabouts and all calls to NBC have gone unanswered.