#still have to do the fucking. audio editing OTL

[missr3n3]

rough draft of clear the stone chapter 4 is done!!!!!

[bunnyandbirb]

Birb’s B-Movies #1 : Birdemic: Shock and Terror

IMDB : 1.8 / Rotten Tomatoes : 19%

Birdemic: Shock and Terror is a 2010 ���“““romantic thriller”””” film written, directed, and produced by the same guy (which we all know is the hallmark of a good movie.) Unlike those masterpieces however, Birdemic doesn’t feature the writer/producer/director James Nguyen as its lead actor... though I’m not entirely sure that it would’ve impacted the quality of the movie much either way.

I stumbled upon Birdemic a few years back and instantly knew that it would be one of my favorite movies of all time. It features all the characteristics of a *quality* film: comically bad acting, dialogue so stilted it’s hard to believe it was written by a real person, truly “special” effects - all compiled by what I can only imagine were two monkeys at an editing desk. It’s almost impossible to understand this movie without just sitting down and watching it, so I encourage you wholeheartedly to witness it yourself.

As the movie starts we’re introduced to our lead, Rod, who is clearly an alien still getting used to his new human body. The movie provides plenty of exposition into his life right off the bat, with five minutes of mundane traffic shots intermingled with equally dull shots of Rod driving. The same 20-second music clip is played on loop for the duration of this entire sequence, sometimes with a few second pauses in between each repetition.

When he finally decides to get out of the damn car, Rod has a horribly audio-balanced interaction in a diner, where he creeps on some girl that he remembers from high school. The girl, Nathalie, is a model who has photoshoots exclusively at one-hour photo studios in strip malls. She diligently cuts her sandwich into pieces and leaves the diner without eating any of it. I originally assumed that Rod runs after her to ask what her problem is, but alas. Instead the two have a painfully awkward conversation and split ways after exchanging business cards (score!) Apparently, director Nguyen had told Nathalie’s actress not to socialize with Rod’s actor outside of filming. This is either because he wanted to keep Rod’s extraterrestrial identity a secret, or he wanted to ensure that the two main characters would have no chemistry whatsoever. He succeeded at one of those, at least.

Rod spends his time watching news broadcasts on global warming, driving through more traffic, and wearing long sleeves under a t-shirt to play basketball. Not only is he terrible at pretending to be human, Rod is also one of the worst salespeople I’ve ever seen.

But hey. Despite barely being able to string together a coherent sentence, Rod somehow manages to whip million dollar deals out of his ass without even breaking out of his monotone. So maybe I’m the dumb one.

The next 50 minutes of the movie pass by like this:

Some guy comes by to install solar panels.

Our favorite couple find a jpeg of a dead bird on the beach.

Nathalie’s mom forgets her lines but they keep the take anyway.

This scene happens.

Rod calls Nathalie his “Hot Ferrari.”

There is a performance of the most memorable song of this century.

Rod and Nathalie go on three (count it, 3!!) awkward dates.

One of these is a double date where they go to watch An Inconvenient Truth.

Another is a mostly silent outing to a pumpkin festival, where Rod looks like he is desperately trying to understand the world around him.

Finally, Nathalie and Rod end up in bed together. There are several agonizingly slow pan shots of seemingly random stock footage of landscapes before we are rewarded with this:

Yes. Those are birds dive-bombing a town, complete with plane sounds.

Rod and Nathalie wake up, and it is revealed that Rod likes to have sex with his pants and belt still on. (This is probably the biggest plot twist in the movie.) They look out the window and see an animated gif of a bird hovering right in front of the glass. After realizing that their phones all don’t work, they push the mattress against the window (which is supposed to help… how?) The birds eventually all leave for no reason and they meet another couple, Ramsey and Becky, that was staying in the room next to them.

The four of them run to Ramsey’s car in preparation for another bird attack, all wielding the most efficient weapon possible: clothes hangers. This swiftly leads up to the greatest fight sequence of all time.

They drive out of town, saving two zombies disguised as children on the way. Ramsey, an ex-marine, drops this line of wisdom: “I'm just tired of all the fucking killing in Iraq. Why can't we just give peace a chance?” before picking from his arsenal of assault rifles and opening fire on any birds in sight.

In between towns, they meet a scientist named Dr. Jones (who Rod eloquently points out by saying, “Hey, look! There’s an old guy on the bridge!”). Dr. Jones lectures to the group for what seems like forever, explaining the dangers of global warming and loosely using that as a reason for the sudden bird attacks. And no, it doesn’t make any sense.

Becky gets instakilled by a bird while innocently taking a shit in a field. The poor girl hardly even got to say any lines. Ramsey and Nathalie try their best to cry. Rod doesn’t even make an attempt.

As the rest of the group run away, they pass by a bus full of people who are being held hostage by birds.

Ramsey has apparently lost his will to live, and goes on a suicide mission to save the passengers. Of course this goes badly (how could it not?). Ramsey and the extras are all sprayed by some kind of bird acid, which looks suspiciously like orange juice with pulp. Pulp is pretty disgusting, so they all scream in prolonged agony and die on the spot.

Rod, Nathalie and the zombie children drive to a convenience store where Rod tries to buy gas from the very authentic Middle-Eastern owner. In fact, I have suspicions that the owner was not actually an actor at all, and Nguyen just asked him to say some lines for the movie. The guy looks like he does not give a single shit about what’s happening. It was also confirmed by the actors that the crew often just showed up to places to film without permits, so there’s that.

In any case, the makeshift family drives along until they get held up by a random cowboy who wants their newly-purchased gas.

He obviously dies via convenient bird, and Rod leaves the scene without even taking the gas with them.

At this point, Nguyen decides that he hasn’t shoved the moral of this movie in our faces enough. As our main characters enter a wooded area, we encounter Tom Hill, a “tree hugger.” Tom gives yet another hamfisted spiel about protecting the environment, only to end the conversation with “I hear a mountain lion! I gotta get back to my house and you better get to your car!”

A forest fire arbitrarily starts as they’re running back to the car, and they make their way to the final location of the movie: the beach.

Rod and Nathalie’s friends, the couple they went on a double date with earlier, are found dead in a car because why not. Rod catches a fish and Nathalie proves how useless she is by bringing back a tub of seaweed. The “kids” refuse to eat either of these things, presumably because they only consume human flesh. They all lock themselves in the car again as the birds attack one last time.

Then the birds leave. Why? Who knows.

We don’t get an explanation, but we do get this scene that doesn’t change until the end of the credits. As you can tell by the wing flaps-per-second, the group of birds on the right are in much better shape than the ones on the left.

Birdemic is a perfect example of a movie that has gone so far into the ‘wrong’ that it loops back into the ‘right.’ I already watch it at least once a month and if anything, it has completely changed my perspective on clothes hangers. The fact that a movie like this was made to be genuinely good gives it that b-movie charm that can’t be knowingly emulated.

Favorite line from the movie: “It's the human species that needs to quit playing cowboy with nature. We must act more like astronauts, spacemen taking care of Spaceship Earth.” - Dr. Jones

Thanks for reading this excessively long overview... OTL

~Stay tuned for more nonsense~

- birb

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