Danny
10-Aug-2007, 08:33 PM
"Having A Boll: Scenes From the Postal Premiere
By Chris Kohler August 10, 2007 | 1:46:49 PMCategories: Culture
The US premiere of bad movie director Uwe Boll's magnum opus Postal took place last night at the venerable Castro Theatre in San Francisco. Baker had of course written a feature called Raging Boll for the magazine just recently, in which he chronicled Uwe Boll's struggle to physically pummel all of his biggest Internet critics. Tonight, we went to the Castro so that Boll could beat not on our bodies, but on our very brains.
"It's like we were in 'Nam together," Baker said to me after it was done, our faces set in stunned silence. "We can't ever explain it to other people, but we'll know."
The Dead Channels film festival was quite excited to have Boll himself there at the premiere, who engaged the audience in a question-and-answer session after the film and joined them at an afterparty in the Mission district later. Baker was taking copious notes, I just took pictures of Boll and the stars of Postal as the mad director went on profanity-laced rants about Bush, the Motion Picture Association of America, and everything in between.
I can sympathize, as you might imagine, with Boll's crusade against the movie ratings system. What I don't understand is how this movie is going to help. Postal is the story of a guy shooting a bunch of people in order to stop Al Qaeda and a religious cult led by Dave Foley from unleashing on the world a batch of avian bird flu hidden in a shipment of penis-shaped children's toys voiced by Verne Troyer (pull the string and it says "only my father and my priest can touch me there!").
Al Qaeda raids Little Germany, a fictional theme park owned by Uwe Boll, who plays himself in the movie. He plays up any and all stereotypes about himself in the film, which would be pretty funny if it wasn't up to and including the one about how his movies are financed with Nazi gold. He pays Troyer in gold teeth. You can imagine where these are suggested to have come from.
If this all sounds funny, it is because I am a pretty funny writer. The jokes, as seen in Postal all fall flat. I don't think it's the fault of the talented actors that Boll enlisted -- it's just all done with the same unavoidably ham-handed crafting that Baker so elegantly describes in his feature ("haphazardly scripted, sloppily edited, badly acted and, most crucially, brutally received").
Boll seems out to shock his audience into stunned disbelief rather than actually entertain them. Early in the movie, we get a long, leisurely shot of a fully nude Foley scratching his reproductive organs. I don't want to sound like I personally was offended or shocked by anything. In fact, the only time I laughed was during the movie's opening sequence, a comedy skit in the cockpit of one of the September 11 airplanes (they're fighting over the number of virgins they get in Paradise). It was legitimately well-paced and funny. But it was followed by 90 minutes of flat jokes.
Boll wants to rally grass roots support of this film, which seems like a pretty high mountain to climb at this point considering that not even personal appearances by the director (and Scut Farkus, who was nice enough to take a picture with me so I could show my mom) could come anywhere close to filling up the smallish Castro Theatre. Postal's gratuitous violence and sex would probably earn it an NC-17, which means that if it's to have a future it will be on DVD as a cult film.
I'm kind of sad I saw this for work, because maybe it would be awesome if I was blind drunk."
Whilst nazi gold would explain a lot its a piss poor movie made by a piss poor director who you all know i think gives directing a bad name, and im not suprised in the slightest.:rolleyes:
By Chris Kohler August 10, 2007 | 1:46:49 PMCategories: Culture
The US premiere of bad movie director Uwe Boll's magnum opus Postal took place last night at the venerable Castro Theatre in San Francisco. Baker had of course written a feature called Raging Boll for the magazine just recently, in which he chronicled Uwe Boll's struggle to physically pummel all of his biggest Internet critics. Tonight, we went to the Castro so that Boll could beat not on our bodies, but on our very brains.
"It's like we were in 'Nam together," Baker said to me after it was done, our faces set in stunned silence. "We can't ever explain it to other people, but we'll know."
The Dead Channels film festival was quite excited to have Boll himself there at the premiere, who engaged the audience in a question-and-answer session after the film and joined them at an afterparty in the Mission district later. Baker was taking copious notes, I just took pictures of Boll and the stars of Postal as the mad director went on profanity-laced rants about Bush, the Motion Picture Association of America, and everything in between.
I can sympathize, as you might imagine, with Boll's crusade against the movie ratings system. What I don't understand is how this movie is going to help. Postal is the story of a guy shooting a bunch of people in order to stop Al Qaeda and a religious cult led by Dave Foley from unleashing on the world a batch of avian bird flu hidden in a shipment of penis-shaped children's toys voiced by Verne Troyer (pull the string and it says "only my father and my priest can touch me there!").
Al Qaeda raids Little Germany, a fictional theme park owned by Uwe Boll, who plays himself in the movie. He plays up any and all stereotypes about himself in the film, which would be pretty funny if it wasn't up to and including the one about how his movies are financed with Nazi gold. He pays Troyer in gold teeth. You can imagine where these are suggested to have come from.
If this all sounds funny, it is because I am a pretty funny writer. The jokes, as seen in Postal all fall flat. I don't think it's the fault of the talented actors that Boll enlisted -- it's just all done with the same unavoidably ham-handed crafting that Baker so elegantly describes in his feature ("haphazardly scripted, sloppily edited, badly acted and, most crucially, brutally received").
Boll seems out to shock his audience into stunned disbelief rather than actually entertain them. Early in the movie, we get a long, leisurely shot of a fully nude Foley scratching his reproductive organs. I don't want to sound like I personally was offended or shocked by anything. In fact, the only time I laughed was during the movie's opening sequence, a comedy skit in the cockpit of one of the September 11 airplanes (they're fighting over the number of virgins they get in Paradise). It was legitimately well-paced and funny. But it was followed by 90 minutes of flat jokes.
Boll wants to rally grass roots support of this film, which seems like a pretty high mountain to climb at this point considering that not even personal appearances by the director (and Scut Farkus, who was nice enough to take a picture with me so I could show my mom) could come anywhere close to filling up the smallish Castro Theatre. Postal's gratuitous violence and sex would probably earn it an NC-17, which means that if it's to have a future it will be on DVD as a cult film.
I'm kind of sad I saw this for work, because maybe it would be awesome if I was blind drunk."
Whilst nazi gold would explain a lot its a piss poor movie made by a piss poor director who you all know i think gives directing a bad name, and im not suprised in the slightest.:rolleyes: