Wednesday, July 30, 2008

On mummies.

First off: No, mummies are not zombies. Mummies are Egyptian, whereas zombies are all-American. Yeah man! 'Merica!
Mummies are not, for that matter, Chinese or terra cotta. Which is why I was slightly confused by the new Mummy movie, "The Mummy: The Something Something Hey Isn't That Jet Li?"
Well of course it's going to be awful. That's not the point. See, what I like about this movie is the timing of its release. It's like saying to China, "Hey, China. Enjoy hosting your little 'Olympic Games' while you can, because one day we are going to send you BRENDAN FRASER! Plus one other actor from the original cast and what appears to be a horde of unenhanced images from Sega's 1988 arcade smash-hit 'Altered Beast.' And they are gonna whoop up all over your imperial pottery!"

I was actually curious what the rest of the interweb had to say about this one, because let's face it, it's basically made up of weirdos and weirdos have a lot of things to say.
But I was immediately sidetracked by The Mummy director Rob Cohen's web-log about post-production, which - and I am not kidding - begins, "Dear Mummy Family--"
What? Do you mean to tell me there is a group of people that have latched onto this movie to the point where they consider themselves a broooood? Or perhaps he's referring to his cast and crew, which over the full three and a half minutes of filming that was not created on a computer somewhere in Burbank really ... really bonded, you know?
Anyway, here's what Cohen had to say:
"Dear Mummy Family --
Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

No, no, we kid here. What he really had to say was, "I hope you all saw the Olympics/Mummy commercial that has been airing on NBC. I think it's the coolest thing ever done for one of my 'films' (snideness included). A very clever piece and I'd like to thank David O'Connor and his team for the great creative work."

Ah! So he's all over the release date/Olympics connection. Very nice. Now, I haven't seen this yet, so let's take a look and make fun of it together, shall we?



Hahahahaha! Oh wow. Really? No wonder the first thing that popped up in a search of "NBC, mummy, Olympics" was "NBC’s '2008 Olympics/Mummy 3' Cross-Promotion Is Appalling..."
That appalled person - Ryan, at Pissed and Petty - went on to explain why:
"NBC may as well have lined up every single 2008 Olympic athlete and systematically spat in their faces. These athletes didn’t ask to be trivialized as poster children to recoup loss on a terrible movie with which they have nothing to do. The ad strips Olympic athletes of their dignity."

And that's human dignity, folks, not mummy dignity (which is of far poorer quality and can usually only be found in dollar stores).
But Ryan is dead on. I couldn't have said it better myself (bastard). Except for one thing - sure, he mocks the overall idea of the commercial, but he never delves into the actual content of it.
If you ask me, I don't think the commercial highlighted America's superiority over other nations enough, either in Olympic games or in mummy combat.
Why, it even went so far as to make the point that Brendan Fraser, arguably the preeminent mummy killer of the past 20 years, has only killed one mummy, albeit twice. (Two albeits in two consecutive blog posts. Weird.)
This is not the message we need to be sending to our fine flu-feathered friends to the east, America. We need to let them know we are coming and we are (apparently) bringing BMX bikes with us!
Sorry. Colbert's on and he got a little bit in my head there.

Where was I? Doesn't matter, I think I've said far more here than I originally intended to anyway, so I'll just leave you with this helpful bit of advice:
If you call (212) 832-3575 x19, and mention the code MUMMYRC08 by August 31, you can get a special 40 percent discount on "the beautiful and informative" art book for "The Mummy: The Something Something Is That The Guy From House? I Like Him. Oh No Wait, That's Not Him, It's Someone Else," A Newmarket Pictorial Moviebook, with an introduction by "filmmaker" Rob Cohen!
That discount was supposed to only go to Rob's friends at his blog, but you know what Rob? I stole your friends. I stole them, and I offered them the book at, let's seeeeee....$18.00 + shipping? Are you for real? How Rob, oh how could you afford to give this book away at such a steal?
You must really like your friends. Oh - I'm sorry. Your "family."
I'm sure they'll still like you too, even after they see all the time and effort and god-awful CGI monsters you put into this flick, which is sure to be just as memorable as the first two. Three?
Ah, who the hell cares.

1 Comments:

Blogger Tracy Ramone said...

2 pts for the usage of the work albeit not once but twice in the same tiny paragraph bravo

and flu-feathered friends - brilliance.

and ya know if brendan goes and finds some other ridiculous big budget blockbuster trilogy to do he can go on that trilogy list of urs - shhhhhh - i'm so not obsessed.

August 1, 2008 at 3:33 PM 

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