Good Morning Internet

Josh and I went to see Tron: Legacy over the week­end. Despite its 49% rat­ing on Rot­ten Toma­toes at that point, I still thought it might be a fun 3D thrill ride.

Boy was I wrong. The movie opened with a title card that instructed us to keep our 3D glasses on for the whole movie, even though only cer­tain scenes were in 3D. It was if the film apol­o­gized to us before even get­ting started.

And then it was two hours of bor­ing. I don’t want to post spoil­ers here, even though I’d save you $13 and two hours, but the plot would be pretty dif­fi­cult to encap­su­late any­way. There were plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties for smart, clever writ­ing, but it felt like they were made dull and con­fus­ing on pur­pose. To that end, I guess, it was faith­ful to the orig­i­nal. Oh, snap!

So then there’s this Daft Punk video, made with the same aes­thetic as the orig­i­nal Tron. There’s more awe­some packed into these three min­utes than all of the new movie, and who­ever directed it should have directed Legacy. Maybe then we could have seen the evo­lu­tion from the orig­i­nal 80s look to the rubber-and-leather sex­i­ness of the new com­puter world. Oh well.

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• Tom Green at the DC Improv

That’s my friend Josh on the left, Tom Green in the mid­dle, and me on the right.

Let’s flash back to 2001. Tom Green’s movie, Freddy Got Fin­gered, was play­ing in the­aters. Josh and I, both stu­dents at Sal­is­bury Uni­ver­sity at the time, drove to the mall to see the movie on open­ing night. Besides for me and Josh, there was only one other per­son in the the­ater. That other per­son, clearly not some­one with the capac­ity to appre­ci­ate high art, walked out mid­way through.

Josh and I loved it. In fact, we still love it. The movie is absurd, sur­real, some­times gross (yet never scat­o­log­i­cal, which is why I can call it high-brow), and very hilar­i­ous. But clearly, it’s not for every­one. Here is Roger Ebert’s reflec­tion on Freddy in his review for Steal­ing Har­vard (which is a crim­i­nally under­rated movie):

See­ing Tom Green reminded me, as how could it not, of his movie Freddy Got Fin­gered (2001), which was so poorly received by the film crit­ics that it received only one lonely, apolo­getic pos­i­tive review on the Tomatome­ter. I gave it—let’s see—zero stars. Bad movie, espe­cially the scene where Green was whirling the new­born infant around his head by its umbil­i­cal cord.But the thing is, I remem­ber Freddy Got Fin­gered more than a year later. I refer to it some­times. It is a mile­stone. And for all its sins, it was at least an ambi­tious movie, a go-for-broke attempt to accom­plish some­thing. It failed, but it has not left me con­vinced that Tom Green doesn’t have good work in him. Any­one with his nerve and total lack of taste is sooner or later going to make a movie worth seeing.

So, hear­ing that Tom Green was on a world-wide com­edy tour, we drove down to the DC Improv to see him per­form. We had no idea what kind of a crowd would show up for him, but we were delighted to dis­cover that the place was packed with kin­dred spir­its. Peo­ple were elec­tri­fied for Tom Green, and his stand-up act was awe­some. He told some sto­ries from his child­hood, the MTV days, the five months in which he was mar­ried to Drew Barrymore.

After the show, he took time to sign auto­graphs, take pic­tures, and chat with fans until every­one had left. He couldn’t have been a warmer, friend­lier guy.

I don’t want to spoil his act, so I highly rec­om­mend you seek him out if he’s com­ing to your area. If you can’t see him live, word is that there will be a tour DVD next year.

Speak­ing of next year, Tom Green has revealed plans to release a director’s cut of Freddy Got Fin­gered in honor of the movie’s tenth anniver­sary. Yes, please!

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• This Daft Punk video makes up for Tron: Legacy
• Seag­ull Cen­tury 2010