Author Archives: Oscar Bermeo

Two films, one trying to spin a new twist in the unstoppable alien monster comes to wreck havoc and destruction everywhere and only one brave warrior, his crazy cohorts and some bad ass fight scenes can end the carnage movie and the other aspiring to become the actual visual definition for Direct-to-DVD.

OUTLANDER
Damn, this movie was some good popcorn munching fun. How it does it without actually having a memorable monster, the main character having an extremely limited emotional range, and the fact that I thought almost every other scene I was viewing was liberally borrowed from every sci-fi/action film I’ve seen in the last two decades is really beyond me.

The plot involves an alien warrior names Kainan, played by James Caviezel, who crash lands in the middle of Viking territory unknowingly bringing a fierce killer monster with him. The Vikings find Kainan, the Outlander, and subsequently all blame him for the destruction the creature has brought but everyone including the Viking King (played with gusto by John Hurt), his daughter Freya, the heir apparent ultra-prime-alpha male Wulfric, the council of warriors, and an (almost) mute boy all grow to love and respect Kainan cuz that’s what happens in these movies.

I felt like I was watching clips of Planet of the Apes, Rambo, Aliens, Pitch Black, The Edge, Pathfinder, The Last of the Mohicans, King Kong (1976), The A-Team, Waterworld, The 13th Warrior, Braveheart, The Road Warrior, Beowulf and (thanks to a character named Boromir) The Lord of the Rings all rolled into one. And anytime I saw Caviezel getting tied up and wooped, I, of course, thought of The Passion of the Christ, except when he was emoting and then I thought of (insert a movie where Christian Bale plays the hero and is trying to be a badass and tender dude at the same moment).

The film almost gives up any chance of being good when the warriors gather in the hall and welcome Kainan into their brood by having him proves his worth by challenging Prince Wulfric in a fierce round of shield dancing. Luckily, Ron Perlman comes in at this moment to do what he does best: wear makeup and kick monster ass with two iron hammers. Ok, not so much on the hammers part but you know Perlman can elevate almost any sci-fi film.

A nice plot twist (that as far as I know the writers did not steal from any previous sci-fi action film) emerges to make the Outlander just that more interesting so we can care what happens to him as he goes on what may be a suicide run to save the Princess, the Kingdom and get back his manhood (end sequence liberally borrowed from just about every macho flick ever made).

Outlander tried real hard and delivered in all the right place with just enough scares, blood and testosterone to keep me happy. A high recommendation for rental but don’t hold your breath for Outlander 2.

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus
If you saw the YouTube trailer, you’ve seen it all. This movie is bad. Not Jackass bad, not Scary Movie bad, not the trailer to Australia bad, this film doesn’t even try to be any good. Sunny already has posted his thoughts and he’s right on with the fact that only Lorenzo Lamas (who now looks more like a guy trying to bag chicks by claiming to be Lorenzo Lamas) is fully embracing what could have been an Ed Wood like classic. Other plus: Deborah Gibson gives it her all and actually makes the movie semi-watchable cuz at least I can start singing “Only In My Dreams” and “Shake Your Love” whenever she has a bad line.

On the writing, if you read the Wiki entry for megaldon (aka Giant Shark) you’ve already read the almost word-for-word exposition from one of the movie scientists.

Barb’s thoughts on this new low point in America cinema and Lorenzo Lamas are here.

Recommendation: I would only buy this DVD with someone else’s money and would only see it again to punish my eyes. Put it to you like this, if it was between this movie and Kanye West’s new book, I would choose neither.

American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry

Rating: 2 of 5 stars

Could also be titled: Experiment for Experiment’s Sake.

I only got through 2/3 of the book (has to go back to my local library) but what I did read was very mixed. My chief concern with this anthology is how it breaks down the tensions in United States Poetry to a “fundamental division” between narrative and experimental texts when all that is explored in this volume is the negotiation between variations in U.S. English non-linear narrative in contemporary academic poetry without putting any focus on hybrid texts outside of academia and/or explore the boundaries of English.

Many of the selections from the poets really only hint at the possibility of hybrid text as the samples rarely show a collision of the two coming together with only a few poets actually able to balance plain language and disrupted text in a single poem or even a few pages. Some of the poets who do show the best of all worlds in this collection include Nathaniel Mackey, Michael Palmer, John Yau and Harryette Mullen.

With a shaky premise to begin with (poetry has always benefited from a collision between various camps, not just a late 20th century argument between academics), a very loose definition of “academic poetry” (probably included because almost every poet is in academia), and a mandate that hybrid poetry can lead us back to a “purer sense of language” and help in the “renaming of the world” (I thought that was the job of all poetry), this collection doesn’t offer a plurality of voices but instead seeks to limit the definitions of what new poetry can be.

View all my reviews.

The summer of 2005 was a trip for me. I moved out of the Bx and defected to the dark side (aka Brooklyn), decided I would no longer be curating/hosting Acentos, met Barb, and was fresh out of poems. Yeah, I was sure as hell that I had no new poems in me and, for the first time in my short time writing poetry, was very cool with that fact. So I was living a paradox of not writing poems but more confident than ever that I was a poet since I was sure that a summer of not writing but doing some intense and varied reading would make up for my lack of poetic output.

The other dope thing that happened was reading Miles by Miles Davis because it showed me that greatness (in any art) takes time, practice, a plan, more time, and risk. Reading on how Miles put together the Birth of the Cool session then moved on to Kind of Blue and transformed again for Bitches Brew put me in some hard check. Here I was thinking the world owed me something after writing poems for three years when Miles was out there working on his craft for decades, had the world knocking for more of the same, and then went off for a decade to remake himself.

The funny thing about the summer of ’05, the summer I resigned not to write any poems, was that it was one of my most productive time periods with some of my first Bronx and mythic poems coming out of me. (Barb was sending some great poet challenges my way and that was where most of those poems came from.)

One more thing I got from reading up on Miles is what a bad human being he could be. Great artist doesn’t always equal great person and in the case of Miles it doesn’t even equal a fairly decent role model. He was a junkie and abused the hell out of women, sins that no amount of great music can ever make right.

Thanks for showing me the ways, Miles. The good ones to follow and the bad ones to avoid.