Now it can be told

Happy August-13th-as-of-45-minutes-ago everybody!

So, this week's "Escape to The Movies" should be up later today at noon, as usual. But since I only get to video-review one movie at a time (usually) I wanted to get the "bigger picture" in as soon as possible: And since it IS August-13th-as-of-45-minutes-ago, I can tell you that the answer to the puzzel... which all of you smarties apparently got right away... was that "The Expendables" is absolutely shit, "Eat Pray Love" is almost-certainly shit, but "Scott Pilgrim" is awesome - like, top-ten-best-of-the-year awesome.

But seriously - "The Expendables" is SHIT. I cannot stress that enough. Shit. S-H-I-T shit. At some point in the future I'll probably elaborate in video-form, but it can't be repeated enough: It sucks. It's "Transformers" bad. THAT bad.

And no, I don't mean that it sucks in the awesome way that 1980s "guy movies" suck and therefore it's ironically-awesome. I know that's what you've heard, and you've heard wrong. It's not an "homage" to bad movies, though it WANTS to be - it just IS a bad movie. Sloppily-directed, terribly written, and it doesn't even play to the strengths of it's assembled cast: Stallone and Rourke are both capable dramatic actors - why not give them anything to do? Statham and Jet Li are both skilled martial-arts stars - why are all the fights choppy over-edited MMA-looking crud? Dolph Lungdren and Terry Crews are funny - why not let them be? I'm struggling to think of anyone in this for whom it's NOT one of the worst things they've ever done, well... except for Steve Austin.

Oh, and the action? It's terrible. Guns get shot, guys fall over, pyro blows, that's about it. Occasionally there's an uninteresting fight scene. Remember all that glorious ultra-gore in "Rambo?" Yeah, not here. It was obviously shot with one eye on a potential PG-13, so it's all quick hits and blink-and-you-miss-it inserts.

It's a complete disaster, cynically banking on audiences either A.) actually still desiring this crap, or B.) thinking their getting Tarantino/Rodriguez-style crap-cinema-elevated-into-self-commentary when it's really just leftovers. So guys, I'm beggin' ya: PLEASE don't let it pay off for them. Not when a real, honest-for-real game-changing masterpiece like "Scott Pilgrim" (which, incidentally, also has better action scenes) is out there, too... or, hell, when you could even just go see Inception again ;)