Camille Crimson

[Editor's Note - This is the first installment of a new monthly feature by Camille Crimson. Next month Camille will be answering reader questions. Check by Friday for this week's Murphy's Law.]

TL;DR version: you do! Hopefully that’s not all you came here for, though. Let me back up a bit.

My name is Camille Crimson. You may remember me from a little feature on here a while back where I taught you all how to make one of my favourite meals. I’m many things – a geek, a gourmand, a motorcyclist, a musician, a budding filmmaker, a loving long-term girlfriend/common-law wife. I’m also a pornographer with a very rich and fulfilling sexual life. If I had started off with that bit of information, I have a feeling it would have made you look at everything after a bit differently, like I was a pornstar trying to justify myself. That’s not quite it.

The vast majority of the population has some really hard lines in their minds about sexuality and how it interacts in our lives. We’re told that there’s a certain way to have and enjoy sex – as privately as possible! Anyone flagrantly exposing their sexual life, especially for financial gain, must have something wrong with them, right?

Wrong! (At least as far as I’m concerned.) I can’t speak for everyone, but my journey into the world of sharing my sexual self came very naturally and has left me whole and validated in my life.

There is no real reason why sex should be private. Our culture has had a very damaging effect when it comes to segmenting our “private” parts and our “private” moments. Our sexual education comes from on high, skewing the information for entertainment or for wholesomeness.

There’s very little real, frank talk about sex, especially its potential for good in relationships and just for ourselves. Without sounding too lofty and optimistic, that’s something I’m trying to undo in the world. It’s a big goal, but I’m not alone.

It’s unfortunate that so few of us are connected to this side of ourselves and I feel that part of it comes from the stigma we attach to others who dare to share. Whether porn performers or simply outspoken, sexually liberated friends, don’t judge them by what they do. It’s probably not nature that makes this seem wrong. It’s nurture. Instead, try to see all sides of the situation and perhaps turn your gaze inwards to see how adopting a more liberal approach in your own life could create room for growth.

To put my money where my mouth is, I want to help. If you have questions about any aspect of sexuality, of sensuality, of relationships, of love, then send them my way. By getting more of this out in the open in a safe environment, we can all learn a little something and hopefully increase the amount of positive dialogue out there about our sexual selves.

Camille Crimson will be back on the site next month answering your questions. Please direction questions to murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com or leave them below in the comments. You can check out her (NSFW) site at CamileCrimson.com.

“When a person spends enough time lying for a living, it gets to the point where you realize the only thing he doesn’t mean is what he’s actually saying.”

- Winona Hawkins

After last week’s premiere episode, which showed us the fallout from season two’s finale and set up the overarcing story for season three, this week we get a standalone episode with the serialized moments existing only on the perimeter. Unfortunately, the overarcing bits proved to be much more interesting than the standalone plot.

The self-contained story ended up giving us a few nice moments for Art and Rachel, but overall it was a bit of a dud. Terry Powe wasn’t a very memorable villain and his plot to get cash by selling out his fellow relocated witnesses was a bit too convoluted and implausible. Even if he followed Nichols to one of the other witnesses’ houses, how would he know who the woman was or which gang to reach out to to give her location? It would seem idiotic to put Mary Archer and Terry Powe in close proximity to each other if there was any chance of either one of them figuring out the other one’s true identity. I just don’t buy that Powe would be able to put two and two together and sell her out to Alazar’s people simply by following Nichols to her house. I guess we could assume he got the information out of Nichols before he put the second bullet in his head, but that certainly wasn’t his original plan. And his original plan doesn’t make much sense. Also, when did he have time to get the cash from Alazar’s people if they hadn’t even gotten to town to put the hit on Archer yet?

That being said, it was nice to see Art quickly figure out Terry was Nichols’ killer and to use any means necessary to find out who Terry sold out. I also liked Rachel getting to protect Mary and her kids in the attic with a well-placed shot to the hitman’s head. Spotlighting them again allowed Raylan to have more of a supporting role this week as he continues to convalesce, which was nice.

Having Carla Gugino as a guest star certainly helped as well. Her role as Assistant Director Goodall was clearly a tribute to her role as Miami-based US Marshal Karen Sisco in the short-lived TV series based on an Elmore Leonard book. Making it clear Goodall was the character’s married name allowed the writers to imply the character was Sisco without coming out and saying it. And, either way, the moment where she and Raylan simultaneously took down the two thugs in the hotel hallway was a thing of beauty. Hopefully this isn’t the last we see of Gugino.

Still, most of the most interesting moments in the episode had to do with the larger overarcing plot. First we had Raylan figuring out Boyd’s ulterior motive for getting incarcerated and quickly springing into action to protect Dickie Bennett. I loved the scene with Raylan and Boyd where they both talked about the strange and twisted particulars of their current romantic relationships. Plus, it was great seeing Boyd clearly flustered as he realized Raylan was one step ahead of him. Of course, Boyd’s desperation move to get himself beat up and put in a cell next to Dickie was a nice Plan B.

We were also introduced to Ellstin Limehouse, the man holding what’s left of Mags Bennet’s fortune. While Neal McDonough got a whole episode last week to introduce us to his as-yet-unnamed villain, Mykelti Williamson gets just one scene to sell us on Limehouse. Thanks to great writing, the scene had him butchering a pig and threatening to burn an underling’s hand with lye, which Williamson was able to take and run with. His calmly delivered but absolutely chilling speech was a thing of beauty.

Overall, this is an episode that is likely to be forgotten as the season unfolds. But there was at least enough fun moments with Art, Rachel and Goodall to make it watchable and enough extracurricular activity that advanced the season-long plot that this didn’t seem like a wasted episode the way some of the season one standalones did.

And another thing …

• Like Neal McDonough, both Mykelti Williamson and Frank John Hughes (who played Powe) had roles on Graham Yost’s former show Boomtown. Williamson had a starring role as Fearless and Powe had a two-episode guest stint playing Vincent Manzani, a cop who turned mole.

• Was I the only one who thought of Tyler scalding Ed Norton’s character with lye in Fight Club during the Limehouse scene?

• I like that Art referred to Hughes’ character as Terry in the beginning of the episode and then Walter (his pre-witness protection name) once he knew he shot Nichols. That was a nice little detail.

• Also, apparently Art and cops everywhere who enjoy giving out old school beatings are all lamenting the decreased popularity of phone books.

• Interesting to note that Raylan and Winona are now staying in her place after the incident at the motel with Ice Pick Nicks. Also, it’s funny that the relator mistook him for Winona’s current husband. I guess that’s easier than having to explain what’s really going on to her.

Written by Joel Murphy. If you enjoy his recaps, he also writes a weekly pop culture column called Murphy’s Law, which you can find here. You can contact Joel at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.

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Real Steel Release Date: January 24, 2012 Director: Shawn Levy Writers: John Gatins (screenplay), Dan Gilroy and Jeremy Leven (story) Stars: Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly and Dakota Goyo MPAA Rating: PG-13 HoboTrashcan’s Rating:

If you’ve ever wanted to see a robot square off against a bull at a county fair, then Real Steel is the movie for you.

It’s a lightweight movie featuring a ridiculous premise (real life Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots) and every sports movie cliché you can imagine and yet somehow it works. If you are looking for a cinematic masterpiece, then you should probably avoid this one. But if you are just looking for some mindless, fun robot boxing goodness, then Real Steel may be the film for you.

At the start of the film, Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a broken down boxer with nothing going for him. He’s washed up, broke and in debt to a few unsavory characters. He makes his money driving around the country with his robot Ambush, fighting it against bulls or whatever he can to make a quick buck. But Charlie is impulsive and likes to go for big money instead of an easy payday, which has a tendency not to work out for him.

Kenton finds out that his ex-girlfriend has died, leaving the 11-year-old son they had together an orphan. Charlie isn’t interested in being a father, but when he finds out his girlfriend’s sister is married to a rich man (who wears an ascot just so you know how rich and uptight he is), Kenton decides to use the kid to leverage $100,000 from the couple. He decides to take his son Max (Dakota Goyo) for the summer with the intention of signing him over and collecting his money once they get back from their European vacation.

Scrounging for spare parts in a junk yard, Max discovers a generation two sparring bot that he decides to keep. Charlie tries to explain that the robot is too small and outdated to make it in the fight game, but Max is just too precocious and optimistic to listen. He cleans the robot up and gets it ready to fight and – lo and behold – the thing can hold its own in the ring. Thanks to it’s “shadow function” (which allows it to mimic the motions of any human), Charlie is able to use his boxing skills to train Atom the robot to be a fierce competitor. Underdog, rags to riches, father-son bonding shenanigans ensue.

The film borrows heavily from other boxing films and sports movies, most unapologetically from Rocky and Over the Top. Finding a way to make an emotionless robot an underdog is no easy feat, but making Atom a training bot and giving him a cute face helps considerably. There’s something charming and quirky and Atom, which helps sell the ridiculous premise. And, of course, there’s an evil, unstoppable champion robot named Zeus out there who is unbeaten in the ring, giving little Atom a Goliath to his David.

It’s ridiculous, but the reason the film works is because of Hugh Jackman. Jackman is so charismatic and fun to watch and he plays the role of Charlie so earnestly that he sells you on everything else. Even when Charlie is being a complete bastard – trying to sell his son for quick cash or stealing parts from a junkyard – he does it in a way that gets you smiling. Like he did so effortlessly in the role of Wolverine, Jackman has once again created a lovable anti-hero in Kenton.

The supporting cast is also solid. Goyo does a fine job as Max and is quite entertaining in several scenes where he gets the robot to mimic his dance moves. Kevin Durand, who excels at playing completely unlikable villains, plays Ricky, a promoter who wants the money back that Charlie owes him and will do what he has to to get it. Anthony Mackie is great as Finn, another promoter who provides Charlie’s robots with fights. And Evangeline Lilly holds her own as Bailey Tallet, the surprisingly “not a wet blanket” love interest for Charlie. (Lost fans will be shocked to discover that even with robots on the loose and Durand playing a villain, Lilly is never once captured and held hostage in the film.)

The film never takes itself too seriously and though it’s overly formulaic, it’s a formula that works. The fight scenes are a lot of fun to watch as well. The CGI for the robots is great and the scenes are shot and paced quite well. The locales that these fights take place, particularly for the underground fights Charlie and Max first enter Atom into, are aesthetically interesting as well. There’s a fight outdoors in a place called The Zoo and a really cool night-time fight that takes place in an empty field lit up by a circle of cars with their headlights turned on. These locales all looked impressive when I saw this film in the theater, but they look even better in Blu-ray, which really allows the colors to pop and the subtle nuances of the background to shine through.

So if you are in the mood for a cheesy, ridiculous film that features robots squaring off against each other, then this may be the film for you. If you are in the mood for a movie that actually features this line of dialogue: “Kenton must have hardwired this bot with a will to go on,” then check out Real Steel. It’s everything you want in an underdog, father-son bonding, robot boxing film.

Bonus Features

The makers of this two-disc Blu-ray have really gone above and beyond on the bonus features. In addition to the normal bloopers and deleted/extended scenes there is a special director’s commentary that syncs with your iPad and a number of fun featurettes.

The first, “Countdown to the Fight: The Charlie Kenton Story,” is a 13-minute faux documentary hyping up Atom’s fight with Zeus by giving you Kenton’s backstory. It gives a lot of background information about Charlie Kenton that isn’t given in the movie and Hugh Jackman and a number of other actors appear in it in character to give interviews. It’s a very well-made featurette that looks and feels like a real documentary that would air on ESPN to hype up the fight.

“Making of Metal Valley” breaks down the shooting of a single scene. It shows what went into shooting the “Metal Valley” sequence, which is the scrapyard where they find Atom. It was a four-day shoot with a number of tricky effects shots, so it’s cool to see how they put it all together. Plus, the stunt coordinator has an eye patch, which is worth watching the whole thing just to see.

There are two other fun featurettes – “Building the Bots” and “Sugar Ray Leonard: Cornerman’s Champ.” The first shows you the real working robots that were created for the film and used in combination with CGI robots. The second is all about Leonard, who served as a boxing consultant on the film and helped Jackman look convincing as a boxer. Both are worth checking out.

Written by Joel Murphy. If you enjoy his reviews, he also writes a weekly pop culture column called Murphy’s Law, which you can find here. You can contact Joel at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.

Aaron R. Davis

I know I’ve mentioned before in these pages that I think Chuck Norris sucks and the people who like him kind of suck, but just to remind you: Chuck Norris sucks and the people who like him kind of suck.

I just don’t get this guy or his inexplicable popularity. He’s got that shitty magic – a combination of mere recognition and nostalgia (which, despite what the Internet blathers on about daily, are not actually the same thing), which makes people overlook that fact that a) he’s untalented, b) he’s not interesting, c) he never once made a movie or TV show that could be objectively considered good unless you were eight when you saw it and then never again since or maybe once took a tow-hook to the head or unless it involved Bruce Lee in some way, and even then, no, Chuck Norris’ movies suck. Also, d) he’s a right wing, homophobic, Huckabee-endorsing, other religion-hating birther, which is the absolute worst thing about him except for the fact that he has people on the Internet who think he is awesome despite the fact that he clearly and definitively is not.

But whatever. If people didn’t like stupid shit, half the Internet would shut down.

So, the latest sucky thing about Chuck Norris is this: he’s demanding that The Expendables 2 be trimmed down to a PG-13 rating, or else he refuses to appear in the picture.

…

What?

I know, I know, it sounds like I’m making a joke, but it’s true: Chuck “The Total Gym Guy” Norris is demanding cuts in The Expendables 2 as if he’s anybody that could tell anyone in Hollywood to do anything. Except what’s weird about it is that producer Sylvester Stallone is agreeing to these demands, because apparently the guy trying to put together the ultimate action series actually seems to think that having Chuck Norris in a flick is something so commercially important it can’t be lost. Apparently he never saw Delta Force. Because that was all Lee Marvin.

And let’s not be mistaken here, The Expendables kind of blew. It was a neat half-joke concept, that you get all of those aging action stars in one place together and make this awesome, stupid action movie. In execution, it was more stupid than awesome. Like, a lot more. But hey, it made some money, and people got excited for a sequel, so more power to Stallone and everyone involved. Since Mickey Rourke decided he was a serious actor that week and declined to appear in the sequel, Stallone turned to Chuck Norris instead. And Chuck Norris demanded cuts.

Why? Because he doesn’t like the salty language.

Yes, because Chuck is a man of the people (unless you’re gay or an atheist, in which case he hates you and thinks you should either be killed or sent to a re-education camp) and insists on being family-friendly (um … now), he’s insisting the language be chopped down, which I really hope against hope is going to lead to a lot of badly-dubbed swears about fargin’ iceholes and mother-fathers. This is a rare case of a movie becoming its own TV-friendly edit before it’s even released in the theaters. Because Chuck Norris, the near-fascist who nigh-treasonously demands to see President Obama’s long form birth certificate because he doesn’t trust a black guy to lead the country, wants to make sure that children aren’t assaulted by the F-word when they head out for a night of blood-soaked, casually violent family entertainment.

That’s the thing that gets me the most. Chuck Norris is presumably fine with the violence; it’s the language he objects to. Sure, kill as many people onscreen as you want, but for chrissakes, don’t call someone a cocksucker as you depict them being ripped apart by bullets!

Family values!

And like I said, The Expendables was okay, kind of. It didn’t make me want to see an Expendables 2. Chuck Norris being in it makes me want to actively avoid it. I just think it’s ludicrous that Stallone, riding the wave of a comeback after the first flick and Rocky Balboa and the surprisingly awesome Rambo, would actually cave on something that naïve. And I think it’s hypocritical that Mr. “Show Me the Birth Certificate Because I Am Apparently Important” has built his career on the exploitation of violence but rather cartoonishly draws the line at dirty words. If some ass hadn’t created the world’s worst Internet meme around the world’s most ridiculous jackass, no one would care. He’d be in his home working out obsessively and talking about his martial arts championships and about how he used to be in movies a long time ago, one of which involved teaming up with a dog to fight crime.

But hey, I get it, whatever. Encouraging hate crimes in your shitty column, good; saying “shitty,” bad. You got it, Mr. Family-Friendly.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

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Nicole Alexandria

The first world has become a culture of entitled pricks.

We don’t make anything anymore. We pay for it. We consume it. And we want it instantly. We are a culture that bitches profusely when free social media websites go down for five minutes. We carry portable phones that can connect us to anything in the matter of seconds. We pay for everything with a plastic card and we hold more faith in its effectiveness than most religions. How many people would even know the word “callus” if you used it in a sentence these days?

We have the rare privilege of being able to still know the “Greatest Generation”: those who survived and fought through the great depression and World War II. We have desecrated their legacy as a culture by becoming everything they weren’t. We trust banks. We throw out perfectly good clothes we grow tired of. We waste food that is almost always pre-made from a jar or a box.

We’ve become lazy. We’ve lost our ability to create and self-sustain without purchasing from others.

My grandfather, the way I remember him, was a bitter old ugly man with ginger hair who drank a pot of coffee every day and chain smoked at the kitchen table. He looked like a younger version of Charles Bukowski, even when he was old. However, his face grew to be distorted, apparently because he was an Irish boxer in his earlier days. I only remember glimpses of my grandmother, except I know she was well liked by everyone. She had cheeks that when she smiled you couldn’t help but smile as well. Her almond-shaped eyes always were deceivingly innocent, until you realize she was joking and you caught a glimmer of evil in them as they smiled back at you. I have the same eyes.

My grandfather was a depression kid. He used to ride on boxcars looking for work until he started working for the Navy shipyards. One day he told everyone he was going to Chicago, but no one really believed him. He rode on boxcars both ways and when he came back he told everyone he wanted to see the spot John Dillinger was shot. To this day a family tradition before any of us leave on a random adventure – which we all seem to do often – we tell everyone we’re going to Chicago.

He worked the shipyards throughout the war. He tried to enlist multiple times, but was turned away each time and told the work he was doing was too important. He used to tell us these great stories about sneaking into classified areas where they would test catapult devices and shoot off rats. He would make screaming faces that the rats would make as they went flying off to their deaths.

A side effect of being depressions kid was that both of them could never sit still and neither of them trusted banks. Although when he died, my grandfather had close to a million dollars. They tried to put their money into as many tangible things as he could. So he built two houses in Cape May, NJ. He’d pack up the car every weekend and my grandmother and the kids would live in a garage and use an outhouse while he built foundations and walls and ceilings. When he finished that, he built the furniture in the houses. Up until a few years ago, we used a kitchen table he made. After that he got into iron works. He made railings, and baker’s racks, amongst other things. When the houses were finished he decided to build a boat.

The only thing he ever failed at was sewing. He decided since my grandmother knew how to sew and would often sew the entire family’s clothes instead of buying new things, that it would be easy and he could do it as well. For his first project, he picked a three-piece suit. And failed miserably. He claimed God needed to humble him anyway.

My grandmother is often overlooked in terms of accomplishments, however she was before her time in that she worked a full-time job. Neither of them needed the money. She would cook dinner, work overnights in a factory, cook breakfast, clean the house and sleep while raising three girls and managing three houses.

If I didn’t remember them vaguely and if there weren’t remnants of their legacy all around me, I wouldn’t believe either one of them actually existed, except maybe as a tall tale told to children at night so they feel better about having to hang out with a mean old man all day who chain smokes and drinks a pot of coffee.

When you look at your life story will you be able to tell stories anywhere near these? When we reminisce of the past to our grandchildren, will it consist of telling our kids which video games we won? What great televisions shows we watched?

We can only hope and pray the world doesn’t come crashing down around us. But if you want to know what that feels like, ask your grandparents.

I’ll be too busy trying to sew a three-piece suit.

Nicole Alexandria is off doing cool things like a boss that you probably never heard of while not giving a single fuck all day every day. You can contact her through Facebook.