So I’m thinking of doing an Uwe Boll display at my vidstore. Here’s the text I have for the display sign. Thoughts? Suggestions?
**UWE BOLL
The worst director in the world?
Through a loophole in German tax law, Boll’s films are tax shelters for his investors . . . but only if they’re flops. This might explain why Boll has a reputation as the worst director working today. But it might not; this kind of bad cannot be explained away that simply. After his first two movies, *Blackwoods *(11% at rottentomatoes.com) and Heart of America (an exploitation picture based on the Columbine shootings, complete with gratuitous teen nudity), Boll found the rut that would remain his home, seemingly, forever: nowadays he only makes movies based on videogames. These include House of the Dead (4% at rottentomatoes.com), Alone in the Dark (1%), *BloodRayne *(4%), BloodRayne II: Deliverance (17%), *In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale *(4%), and this year’s gloriously horrible masterpiece of bad taste, *Postal *(9%), in which Boll himself makes a cameo for the sole apparent reason of making a joke about pedophilia. Not to be missed.
Do yourself a favor: recalibrate the bottom end of your personal movie-ratings scale. But keep a bucket close by.**
I think Boll has received enough free promotion due to countless insipid bashings on the net, causing flocks of hipsters to check out his films and watch them for ironic appreciation, only to be left disappointed – in all reality, he simply isn’t worth the attention, he’s bad, but not entertainingly so.
There’s countless bad directors, most of whom stay in their deserved place somewhere at the bottom of the ‘3 for 1’ bin at the Walmart checkout; I’d say that’s where Uwe belongs, too.
EDIT: Now why’s there an ad for ‘Telekinesis Training Now!’ at the bottom of this page? :dubious:
Oh, and also, I think technically Boll’s not exploiting any tax loop holes, he’s using the law for what it was created – to help directors make movies.
That’s what I’m afraid of. I’ve never seen an Uwe Boll movie but have been considering it just to see what the hubbub is about. If you’re right, it’s about pretty much nothing.
I like the idea and the text, except you might want to consider changing the last line. “recalibrate the bottom end of your personal movie-ratings scale” works for talking to people on the internet, but IMO not so much for a store display. Maybe try telling them to prepare to rethink the concept of what a bad movie is without using the scale metaphor, which might be confusing if you don’t normally talk like that.
Also you should add a line saying you won’t accept refunds from people who dislike the movies.
“No refunds, rent at your own risk” is a good idea.
Some of them are like that. House of the Dead is terrible, but boringly terrible, except for the spectacle of watching Jurgen Prochnow slumming (and for him, that’s saying something).
On the other hand, Bloodrayne and especially Alone in the Dark are friggin’ hilarious.
Alone in the Dark is a stunned, open-mouthed, silent scream of spectacularly entertaining BAAAAAD. I have not yet had the nerve to do Bloodrayne. But dude.
You need to throw in something about Mr. Boll defending his reputation against movie critics in the boxing ring, and the movie critics being trounced by Mr. Boll’s fists of fury.
Yeah, I thought of that. I think I’m gonna err on the side of making it more like a sign than an article; people don’t read them anyway. I figure I’ll add details conversationally for the few people who actually bite.
Very well-written and humorous. My only qualm is that “videogame” should be two words. This seems to be a matter of controversy, however: the AP and New York Times style guides use “video game,” however, a number of other sources use “videogame,” including a well-written game-centric style guide and a book written by the “Father of Video Games” (Videogames?) himself, Ralph Baer. This, however, is probably personal preference- if you want it to be “videogames,” then keep it that way.
Watched *Bloodrayne *last night. Truly a magnificent work of bad filmmaking. Entertaining as hell because the badness just kept outdoing itself; it never got boring. THE best outrageously fake battle wounding ever; makes the Monty Python “Peckinpah” sketch look like a hiddencam snuff film.