It’s hard to remember a time when Steven Seagal was actually cool. It was 1988, when nobody knew who he was, yet here he was, headlining a pretty good B-actioner called ABOVE THE LAW. It heralded the dawn of a new (stoic) action star, whose career would be packed with hit after hit … until it imploded.

Each and every step is chronicled, examined, poked and prodded by single-monikered Internet movie reviewer Vern in the exhaustive and exhaustingly hilarious SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL. Vern begins exactly where he should, with a dissection of ABOVE THE LAW that runs a staggering 16 pages. His love for the movie is evident, but that doesn’t mean he’s not above taking some potshots (”It’s obvious that the CIA is corrupt is they’re gonna hire a guy who looks like Henry Silva. I mean look at the guy’s face. Don’t tell me they didn’t know that motherfucker was evil”).

Seagal’s debut marks the start of what Vern terms his “Golden Era.” (For the record, the book is divided into that, plus the “Silver Era,” “Transitional Period” and “DTV Era.”) All Seagal fans know that the early days were the best, given the too-much-fun, mega-violent, ponytail-laden shoot-’em-up romps that were HARD TO KILL, MARKED FOR DEATH and OUT FOR JUSTICE.

Next came Seagal’s biggest critical and commercial hit, UNDER SIEGE, which heralded the beginning of the “Silver Era,” a time when the actor’s clout grew to such that he began exerting more of his influence into his films, like the environmental speech to the audience that closed ON DEADLY GROUND, also his directorial debut. It was a period that also saw his first sequel (UNDER SIEGE 2), his first death (a fraction into the incredibly underrated EXECUTIVE DECISION) and an attempt at gloomy serial killer/buddy cop films (THE GLIMMER MAN).

Of that last one — a failure at the box office — Vern wonders about the reasoning behind Seagal’s character’s nickname of “The Glimmer Man” because when he served as an assassin, a glimmer of light would be the last thing his targets would see before death: “You can’t just assume they saw a glimmer unless there is some kind of evidence. Unless somebody carved ‘glimmer’ into the jungle floor with a twig as they gasped their last breath, this glimmer man story just does not hold water.”

Seagal’s “Transitional Period” includes his first two straight-to-video movies and two attempts at a box office comeback, one of which — EXIT WOUNDS — worked. But HALF PAST DEAD didn’t, and that gave way to the “DTV Era,” where he apparently has resigned to play for the rest of his natural born life. (Even the much-delayed THE ONION MOVIE, in which Seagal spoofs himself in a fake movie trailer for COCKPUNCHER, is skipping the multiplex for shiny discs.)

I knew Seagal had made a lot of low-budget flicks that bypassed theaters to premiere on DVD. Heck, I’ve seen exactly two of them: TICKER, which isn’t overtly terrible, and SUBMERGED, which is. But did you know that he’s made — at press time — 17 of these things? All of them have appeared within the last decade. Compare that number to his theatrical output: 12. That’s sad.

These DTV efforts sport terribly generic titles (BLACK DAWN, URBAN JUSTICE) that render them interchangeable. And that’s the only downside to SEAGALOGY: Because the films themselves are so repetitive, so be it the book. It may be different for those who’ve actually seen these movies, but the wide majority of us have not, and you can only read “ex-CIA” so often before your eyes gloss over. Still, Vern’s descriptions remain uproarious, and likely more entertaining than the flicks.

It is interesting that twice now, Vern writes, two of these DTV-era Seagal pictures were shot as ALIEN-esque sci-fi invasions — SUBMERGED and ATTACK FORCE — only to be shorn of those elements entirely in the editing room. Now that’s moviemaking! It also says a lot about the quality and care put into these flicks when, as Vern points out, one of them — FLIGHT OF FURY — was actually a remake of a Michael Dudikoff movie … and Seagal didn’t even know it! (Notes Vern, “Both versions have topless women in them.”)

In a stroke of semi-genius, Vern also reviews Seagal’s two CDs and his branded Lightning Bolt Energy Drink, which is the worst thing that’s ever been in my mouth.

Vern likes the beverage, but I won’t hold that against him. I also won’t hold his association with Ain’t It Cool News against him, because — unlike that site’s “pwesent”-begging, self-aggrandizing, well-connected leader, Vern can actually write. And SEAGALOGY not only made me laugh my ass off, but sent me to Amazon to buy some of the early Seagal DVDs I didn’t already own. This book is an instant cult classic. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

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… and one that’s not …

GREAT GUACAMOLE

As for HITCH #37, while it held my attention start to finish as usual, the shift to a ’straighter’ tone (especially in the movie reviews) was hyper-noticeable. Was the decision to dump the funny, right or wrong, a conscious one?
Doug Moench
Ottsville, PA

Doug: We were unconscious, and mostly remain that way.

I love Hitch. It’s quite possibly one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. The POLICE ACADEMY issue still makes me laugh my ass off. Is it still around? The Tower I frequent seems to have stopped stocking it. Then again, they stopped stocking all the magazines I like.
Michael Sulllivan
Mountaintop, PA

Michael: Know what else Tower’s not stocking anymore, too? EVERYTHING! They’ve gone out of business and just hit me with a huge bill for unsold issues, like that’s going reverse their bankruptcy or something.

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When Dan Brown’s THE DA VINCI CODE hit it big – and “big” really isn’t an accurate word for it – it was inevitable that Hollywood would pounce to make it into a movie. It also was inevitable that the result would mine box-office gold.

What I didn’t expect is that said motion picture would be a leaden, crashing bore.

Say what you will about Brown’s book – that includes you, offended Catholics and people who now pretend they never liked it when they totally it – but there’s no denying that sucker had a pace that rivaled a toddler after downing a sippy cup full of Red Bull. With Brown’s purposely plotted three-page chapters propelling you from one set piece to the next, CODE flew by in nothing flat.

By comparison, Ron Howard’s adaptation – already overlong at 149 minutes – crawls on the floor, about as speedily as the assassinated character who opens the film, with every scene drawn out past its welcome, overstuffed with interminable speeches. There’s something to be said for brevity – a concept likely eradicated from Opie’s brain once he won the Best Director Oscar.

Ironically, the film may be among Howard’s most accomplished simply in terms of how sharp it looks. It’s well-made, with obvious care spent on lighting locations perfectly, on getting details just right. But it’s for next to nothing, as Akiva Goldman’s screenplay hampers all efforts from the get-go, making one colossal mistake: treating the source material as if it were literature.

Look, I loved reading CODE – I admitted that proudly before the hype set in and I’ll admit it proudly today – but it’s a B-level thriller. There’s nothing wrong with that, especially since it’s a B-level thriller that works like a fine-tuned machine. But Goldman treats it as if it were a work of serious art, where every sentence had been constructed with precious care, like a Jenga tower, with designs on a Pulitzer Prize.

In doing so, the fun is sucked clean out of it, leaving us with one history lesson (and quasi-history lesson) after another, all of which numb our attention. Though it hews closely to the original story, there’s nothing here that sheds light on why the book sold two bazillion copies and counting. Things distract us: Tom Hanks’ ill-advised academic mullet, Audrey Tautou’s neck mole, Ian McKellen’s shameless honey-baked ham of a performance. Brown didn’t give us a chance to get distracted; if something threatened to lose steam, the chapter would be over and we’d be off to another character entirely.

The listless tempo carries with it an unintended side effect: highlighting how entirely preposterous Brown’s puzzle-upon-puzzle plot is. Never mind how an old man with mere minutes to live could plant hidden clue upon hidden clue by the minute chance that the people he intended to follow it would indeed – one wonders why the treasure hunt be so elongated when, honestly, it needs no steps beyond the first one. That’s something easily forgiven in the reading experience (if thought is even given to it at all), but maddeningly apparent in the movies.

There’s a truly crackerjack piece of cinema to be made from Brown’s short bibliography, full of action and suspense. But it’s not going to come from a prestige project – Hollywood would be wise to go sleek and quick, rather than with someone looking to add another statuette or two to his mantle. –Rod Lott

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From: VERA
Date: Friday, November 3, 2006 5:39 AM
To: hitchmagazine.com
Subject: Garbage is garbage and by any other name garbage is still garbage

This piece of garbage was e-mailed to me, most probably by you.

I would normally ignore it, but I decided to have my staff do a little research on you. What a waste of their and my time.

And what a sad case you are! To go to such an extreme, of defacing a copyright photograph Mr. Goulet and to also completely misquote him, clearly reveals your sleazy profile.

Did it ever occur to you as to what Mr. Goulet thought of your so called journalistic incompetence and un-professionalism? I guess your vanity would not allow such a self exam.

Oh yes, the clock is ticking on Mr. Goulet, as it is on all of us.

But, while his clock is ticking, Mr. Goulet spends his time contributing to life, helping people and bringing smiles to thousand of faces.

What are your contributions? It is obvious that you will not be receiving a Pulitzer prize for your journalistic accomplishments, and certainly not for your literary or artistic humor.

“Egoistical jerk” What an impressive rich vocabulary and such an impeccable command of the English language!

You call you self a journalist! You are sad joke, a pathetic cowardly man. Garbage is garbage, and by any other name, garbage is still garbage!

A very wise old man once told me “Do at least one good thing a day for someone else, and you will feel good about yourself”. How many good deeds have you done this year? Stop and think about it before you continue to flood the internet with your insensitive, irrelevant, inconsequential useless rubbish.

Go get a life and do something good for your fellow men before your clock ticks out.

VERA GOULET
P.S.
Please do not respond or send me any more of you idiotic e-mail links to you garbage, website disguised as a magazine which only you and your friends read. Any correspondence from you will go in to the “junk mail” where it belongs.

P.P.S.
I will say a prayer for you - you will need it before and after your clock stops

Dear Vera:
1. No, I didn’t send it to you.
2. His quote was word for word, tape-recorded. Someday I’ll post the entire transcript.
3. One can still do good deeds and have a raging, disparaging ego.
4. I hope Will Ferrell got a similar letter.

Thanks to David Grizzard for this chilling comparison.

Hey, mateys! Time for an obligatory PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST post!

McDonald’s is currently ass-deep embroiled in a PIRATES promotion, with their Happy Meals containing all sorts of cheap, chintzy PIRATES toys (if one can call a red pirate skullcap a “toy”). All McDonald’s locations from coast to coast have marquees that read “PIRATES BE HERE.” Except at the one by my house, where a letter is broken, and it reads “PIRATES BF HERE.”

Which, I recently read, was supposedly quite commonplace.

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All the people who criticized ULTRAVIOLET during its brief theatrical release earlier this year took it to task for sometimes resembling a video game, a comic book and/or a cartoon.

But that’s total B.S. The movie always resembles a video game, a comic book and/or a cartoon.

Still in ass-kickin’ RESIDENT EVIL mode, Milla Jovovich stars as Violet, a pawn in the “blood wars” between humans and hemophages, the latter being those infected by a virus that made them supercharged and gave them vampire teeth. There’s not much story here, beyond Violet having to protect a creepy boy who’s wanted by both sides for his amazing voodoo powers. It’s all an excuse for high-octane, gravity-defying, techno-scored fightin’ and chasin’ with Red Bull-infused pacing.

The movie looks pretty cool with all its curve-huggin’ costumes, huge weapons and candy-coated color scheme, but it’s all so artificial and green-screened to death. Even the actors – one of the very few real things not added in post – have a glazed-donut look to them that makes them look like they were in FINAL FANTASY. Writer/director Kurt Wimmer – who made the decent 2001 cult fave EQUILIBRIUM with, ironically, too much story – tries so gosh-darned hard to make ULTRAVIOLET be the Coolest Movie Ever that he ends up making Not Even the Coolest Movie I’ve Seen This Week.

In other words, it verges on becoming a parody of itself. Wait, scratch that. Within the first 10 minutes, it does become a parody of itself. I think it’s the point where CGI fairy dust twinkled across a closeup of Milla’s eyes when she removes her sunglasses. To be honest, I had to call it quits after 30 minutes; the pain was just too much to bear. What’s it say about a movie’s quality when I can’t sit through its full 90 minutes, but I can spend about twice the time reading its novelization in its entirety? –Rod Lott

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• he only words I can think of for Shannon Whirry is “WOW”.
• This flick really has a crazy storyline to it, but seeing Whirry in those scampy undergarments and in the flesh is an absolute treat.
• i liked it it seamed to capture all of shannonns beauty.
• Not a top-of-the-line evil nude kinkfest from Shannon Whirry, but it might turn the crank of some of you. The best scene is when Whirry tries to escape and jams her huge funbags in a doggy door… They end up greasing her up, which I have always wanted to see.
• As she is imprisioned in what could be inferred as a metaphorical construction of Richard’s yearning lust for superiority, the viewer is reminded of Plato’s allegory of “the Cave”, however, in this tale, the table is abruptly turned, “climaxing” (literally) in a orgy of indulgence and vice.
• She’s dancin’ in front of a big mirror , she undresses herself from the waist up,and she’s dancin’ to a romantic love song while both of her beatiful,big boobs are exposed. The scary stuff,the sex,and the fun make The Granny 3 times as good!
• Shannon Whirry is like no other actress anywhere in the world. This movie is the greatest piece of work ever caught on film. You will fall in love with her after five minutes of watching this. You’ll quit your job, leave your family and just watch this movie over and over again, forever.

And just in case you’re wondering whatever happened to Shannon Whirry, she’s making tick collar commercials.

Discuss it in our forums.

Discuss it in our forums.

Things I learned from the UPS employee while waiting for her to just get me my damn package:

• She has three grandkids.
• One is 3 years old.
• One is almost 1.
• Their daddy is a police officer.
• She has three kids.
• The youngest is 28.
• He’s the one with the grandkids.
• She pulled her back at work.
• She’s on medication so she can’t drive.
• The medication is “the good stuff.”
• Her daughter-in-law drives her to work.
• The one with the babies, you see.
• They stopped and got her a salad on the way in today.

The forums are open! The forums are open! And in case you weren’t paying attention, the forums are open!

As of today, the Hitch discussion forums/message boards/whateveryouwannacallthem are up, operational and waiting for you at eyeballforums.com. Use them to discuss movies, TV, music and current events, whether covered here or not; to post strange and interesting images; to gossip; to bitch; to rant; to rave. Before you ask “What’s the ‘eyeball’ all about?,” Hitch is part of the Eyeball Media Group of cool websites, which also includes Bookgasm, Daily Starlet, Joe Bartender, All Things Damaged and the new Guerilla Cinema.

For now, the comments on that site will remain open, but I’ll likely close them down in the near future and just have all discussion take place in the forums. Besides, today’s spam comments alone – about penis enlargement, online casinos, prescription drugs and porn cartoons – totals 993!

From Ken Davis at Hitch’s Wichita Bureau comes this fine example of grade-school smut:

So Saturday morning, there’s a knock on the door. It’s a scruffy looking redneck type offering free estimates for tree trimming. Since we have a huge oak in our backyard with broken branches and major overhang, I take him up on it. I’ve had people give me estimates before, but they were always ridiculous – like in the $500 - $750 range – so I’ve always declined. This guy offered to do all my trees for $250, so he won my business.

But anyway, as I was taking him into the backyard to show him the oak, he stopped me and said (imagine HEE-HAW accent here), “‘Scuze me, I don’t mean to be unprofessional, but do ya mind if I take a leak right here?”

As one whose bladder is always full, I could sympathize. “Whatever,” I said. “Just don’t expect me to shake your hand later.”

“I hate to ask, but man, I gotta pee, ya know?” he said, letting it loose. “My balls are floatin’!”

We left the house before he and his crew were completely finished, so no telling what other bodily fluids they further secreted/deposited. But upon overhearing this story, my 5-year-old daughter informed me she never wants to go in the backyard again.

In January of 1995, I interviewed Robert Goulet about (among other things) his fight against prostate cancer. He was an egotistical jerk, and pretty flippant about his ability to cheat God and bend time and rule all dimensions. He claimed to be neither scared nor changed by the near-fatal ordeal, saying “Hell, no! I’m gonna die when I’m 88; I got it all planned. I think 88’s a good time to go and see the Lord. What the hell?”

Longtime Hitch readers know we haven’t forgotten his promise, counting down the years in every issue since his bold proclamation. And now, through the magic of the Internet, we can hold him to it in real time! Just click here to visit our new, handy online Robert Goulet Death Watch anytime to get your between-issues update! Note it is also accessible from any page under the “Departments” link on your right.