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But as long as I'm doing this, I may as well start. I had planned to go to the Republic of Texas Rally and Parade tonight. Its one of the biggest motorcycle events in the country, and I enjoy seeing the never-ending motorcycles and riders, as well as the entire crazy scene (#bikerchicks). But Holy Gridlock Batman! It took me about half an hour just to make it the 11 blocks from my office at Cesar Chavez and Congress to 11th Street, thanks to road closures, beer trucks parked in and taking up an entire lane, road construction, and a sinkhole, that's right a sinkhole, on Cesar Chavez near IH-35. Downtown Austin is the City of Gridlock just on a normal night. All those other factors made it look like the Hurricane Rita evacuation. Or Mexico City. I have no idea what's next. Over 180 people move to Austin every day, and they all seem to drive downtown every Friday and Saturday night. 'Cause no weekend is complete without spending some time at J. Black's Feel Good Kitchen and Lounge. I'm like totally rolling my eyes as I write that. And when they're not downtown, they're parking in front of my house to go to Zilker Park or Auditorium Shores. So with downtown resembling wartime Sarajevo, I figured I had better things to do than brave the carnage.
Call me a wuss. I decided not to do Top 5: Soul Brothers. Maybe one day when people aren't so touchy and I don't have a career to protect I can write such things. But for now, its like Michael Scott said, you can't be funny anymore.
So I'm instead exercising my Executive Privilege to substitute a new list. Most Annoying Movie Characters.
I saw The Sound of Music last weekend at the Paramount, as many of you know. It was the "sing along" version, where people not only sing the songs (I didn't) but are encouraged to talk and scream at the characters. How that's different from any other movies these days, I'm not exactly sure. Anyway, I noticed that people relentlessly hissed and booed anytime the evil Baroness Schrader came on screen. Not just at first but the whole movie. I'd experienced this before at the Paramount, even in a non-sing-a-long version. People just don't like the Baroness.
As she continued spewing hate speech, anti-nun, syrupy sweet venom against Julie Andrews, I became more and more annoyed at her. It made me recall other movie characters who made my skin crawl. They serve as necessary plot points, but in some cases, the villain either goes so far or becomes so creepy and gross that every moment they appear on screen pushes you that much closer to therapy. I'm not talking so much about the truly horrible, disgusting, personifications of evil in deadly serious movies. You know, like Tom Cruise in...everything. No, I'm talking about the second-level villains. The ones that aren't so much evil as incredibly, mind-numbingly annoying. The ones you'd like to just grab by the shirt and bitch slap. The Frank Burns of movie characters.
Here's my list of the worst and most annoying movie characters.
5. Baroness Schraeder (The Sound of Music). Penciled on eye-brows? Check. Inappropriately dressy day-wear? Check. Evil machinations to ship the adorable kids to boarding school and turn Capt. Von Trapp's mind into Styrofoam? Check. Geez, what a jerk. She can't play ball toss with the children, or do much of anything but sit her bony self around and cast evil glances in Maria's directions (or roll her eyes in Gay Uncle Max's direction at the general proceedings). Guilting Maria into leaving the house, then offering to do anything she can to help? You are one miserable ho, Baroness. Oh, and nice long-stem cigarette holder. Unless you're Holly Golightly, Jessica Rabbit, or Marlene Dietrich, go ahead and assume you should just never use one of those. Hey, if you don't have enough game to outduel someone from the nunnery, you should at least graciously concede defeat and go away so we won't have to spend the entire movie hissing at you.
4. Chet Donnelly (Weird Science). The Bill Paxton character, Anthony Michael Hall's psychotically abusive older brother. He's about as terrorizing in an ultimately non-threatening way as you can get, the perfect older brother punk. Like Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite, but ten times more evil. Kelly LeBrock gives it to him in the end, and not in a good way, turning him into a giant frog, or Jabba the Hut type creature. A fate too good for him.
3. Douglas C. Niedermeyer (Animal House). The quintessential bully/school terrorist/authority figure gone wrong. Niedermeyer is the rich Omega frat boys' Himmler to President Greg Marmalarde's Hitler. The ultimate Peter Principle jackass, achieving position by connection and wealth rather than talent. He possesses relentless, yet underachieving evil in spades. Or as Dean Wormer said, "Put Niedermeyer on it. He's a sneaky little shit, just like you." Yet for all his sinister plans, he can never execute them competently. This allows Flounder and the other Delta brothers to escape largely unscathed, and later prompts his own troops in Vietnam to "frag his ass." Oh, and nice cigarette holder, Niedermeyer. See above. You and the Baroness and Holly will no doubt enjoy many fun afternoons drinking tea and gabbing with the other girls.
2. Kevin Costner (in any movie). Its not that he's playing an annoying character so much; its more that he's so annoying that any character he plays becomes annoying. I can't exactly figure out whether its the emotionless monotone, the blank stare, or the stroke victim-slow speech pattern that makes Costner so annoying. Or maybe all of the above. Or the fact that his stupid Dances With Wolves beat GoodFellas for the Best Picture Oscar. Which was kind of like picking Susan Boyle over Kate Upton for Homecoming Queen. Costner can succeed only when he plays characters where he only has to be himself, which apparently means he's a shallow, boring, self-obsessed, flatlining jerk. Tin Cup, anyone? Yet, despite all this, he goes through life with this incredibly entitled persona. For nearly 15 years, major Hollywood studios kept throwing millions of dollars at him to make one crappy movie after another: The Postman, Waterworld, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Costner makes Sylvester Stallone seem like Laurence Olivier. Will Ferrell once said when he imitated George W. Bush, he strove for "arrogant ignorance." That's Kevin Costner too.
1. Jar Jar Binks (Phantom Menace). You know, in some sense, its not really fair for everyone to keep harping on this character. Obviously Lucas and his merchandizing consultants intended Jar Jar Binks to make millions off Star Wars' collectors and on product tie-ins. So what do you expect when you put focus groups in charge of creating movie characters? But its one thing to design a horse and come up with a camel. Its another thing to write a Star Wars movie and put the Republic's version of Gilbert Gottfried on screen for half the movie. I mean, what the hell was that supposed to be? Some kind of psychological warfare experiment? How did none of the other characters manage to strangle him within the first 30 minutes? For a character to stand out as so wretchedly bad in that quagmire of a movie really accomplishes something. We all lost about a year off our life span watching that mess. Fortunately, Darth Vader knew how to deal with that nonsense.
(Dis)Honorable Mention: Willie Scott (Temple of Doom), All the Ewoks, Carrie Bradshaw, Troy Deier (that total slacker douche played by Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites), Everyone in St. Elmo's Fire, Judd Nelson (The Breakfast Club), and the kid in Jerry Maguire ("DID YOU KNOW THE HUMAN HEAD WEIGHS 8 POUNDS!!!!)
NEXT-Top 5 Pickup Lines. "Are you gonna kiss me or do I have to lie about that?"
1 comment:
Soooo...I totally love Kevin Costner. I mean, I can't defend it really.
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