The Dark Room vol.3: With Mirth and Laughter…

Hello everyone. Let me first of all, re-welcome you all to the QSS Blog. Hope you all enjoy and have fun (and get ready for T4 tomorrow like myself). Volume Three of The Dark Room is all about comedy. I thought I would choose movies that are fun, quirky, or just exciting. Whatever the style, I know you guys will enjoy these if you have not seen them. Lets start.

1st flick: American Splendor
This movie is a funny biography about the infamous comic book artist Harvey Pekar, played beautifully by the great Paul Giamatti. The story follows Pekar in his life before and after his comic, American Splendor, gets published. It is all about him and his working-class American lifestyle.

Pekar is a man who loves to read, write, and listen to jazz. So one day while looking around a garage sales for a cheap and rare jazz album, he meets a man named Robert Crumb who also loves music and is an artist. As time goes by, the two men reunite and Pekar finds that Crumb is big in the world of underground comic books, which inspires Pecker to start his American Splendor comic series.

Through the recognition, he gains fame and the love of his life, a woman by the name of Joyce Barber who worked at a comic store and who was quite the fan of Pekar’s. We follow them as they both cope with Pekar’s life in the spotlight and how he handles it, which is not necessarily all that well. For instance, his attitude on the David Letterman Show (one of my favorite scenes in the movie) is one for the …books.

This movie is a part biopic, part comedy, part documentary, part animation. There are so many elements to this movie that make it so enjoyable. Pekar is someone who I think all of us can understand and relate to. He is one of those people who says what he thinks and makes his opinions known. I know you will enjoy following Pekar around in this movie. There is no more I can say about, just watch it.

Enjoy here: American Splendor

2nd flick: Being John Malkovich
Now there is a good chance that some of you may already have seen it, but if you haven’t, you really should. The movie is full of familiar faces such as Cameron Diaz, the always amazing John Cusack and another name, oh yeah… John Malkovich This movie is great and quite unique.

Being John Malkovich is about a puppeteer named Craig (Cusack), who reluctantly takes a job working as a filer. The floor he walks on is literally a half floor (ceiling is very low), and one day while hunched over filing, Craig finds a hidden room which, for some reason, he decides to crawl in. He finds out that this doorway is a portal into the mind of John Malkovich which allows the visitor to hear, and feel everything Malkovich is doing for only 15 minutes at a time,  then get spat out of the portal near a highway turnpike.

Now, of course, this is a big and crazy discovery. AND is where all hell breaks loose. Lotte, Craig’s wife played by Diaz, is introduced to the portal, and soon after a woman by the name of Maxine finds out about it as well and wants to start making money off of it. Craig flirts with Maxine, Maxine flirts with Lotte (only when inside Malkovich’s body) and soon Malkovich himself finds out about the portal and the plot to make money off of getting into his head.

This movie takes you on a strange and quirky ride as you can’t resist laughing at what goes on in and out of Malkovich’s head, and can’t help but get excited to see what happens next. Being John Malkovich is an amazing movie that is full of imagination and fantasy and should have won at least one of the Oscars it was nominated for.

Take your brain on a journey here: Being John Malkovich

3rd and final flick: 11:14
This last movie was so crazy, I honestly don’t understand why it did not receive a wide theatrical release. It would have been great for the everyday public. Take the beautiful elements of Crash and mix it with the ridiculousness of my favorite comedy show It’s Always Sunny in Phildelphia and you get 11:14. This movie literally is Crash on crack. There are so many twists and turns, it will have you on the edge of your seat, in shock and laughing your ass off.

We first see a man named Jack driving in his car talking to someone of his cell phone. Jack is a little drunk and by the time his clock turns 11:14, he hits a man in the road. Then comes a woman in her car who thinks he had hit a deer. She calls the cops to help him, a cop comes along who finds out about Jack’s DUI history and finds that Jack did not hit a no deer. This is where some of the strangest incidents begin.

I can’t tell you too much more because, like I said, it is full of many twists. This movie is completely brilliant and funny. Like Crash, it is told from the persepctive of different characters who all have there own problems and/or get into some form of trouble. But like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the ways they choose to resolve these issues are not really the smartest way to go, and they nearly make you piss yourself. 11:14 honestly manages to be stupid and smart all at the same time. I wish there were more movies done this way, so much it is exciting and unexpected. We never know what will happen next, but  are still trying our best to connect the dots. Like my beloved Kontroll, 11:14 is another one of my special little gems I want everyone to enjoy.

Let the craziness start here: 11:14

Have fun this weekend and enjoy the films this week (along with Termintor Salvation). See you next week right here in The Dark Room.

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