froodle | Entries tagged with how to rob a bank

Okay dudes, googlebrat has come up with the awesome concept of the Anti-Wishlist. No, it's not a list of things that are shit that I do not want you to buy for me. These are beautiful things that I already own, that I think other people should also own. Because they are beautiful.

In the grand tradition of all the best memes, once you have read my Anti-Wishlist and been overwhelmed by my good taste and encyclopedic knowledge of everything that is good ever, you have to write your own Anti-Wishlist. Be it games, music, books, films, TV shows, whatever, make a list of ten things you think other people should want for Christmas, and why.

How To Rob A Bank

Dudes, it totally offends me that more of you are not talking about the greatness of this movie. It basically starts with Nick Stahl (aka Ben Hawkins from Carnivale) ranting about bank surcharges while trapped in a bank vault, then moves to him ripping the duct-tape off the mouth of Jessica, a saucy librarian type (saucy librarians are my favourite kind of librarian, FYI) who proceeds to verbally abuse him, which prompts him to snap "Whoa there, Skippy. If I wanted more verbal abuse, I would just call some customer service centre somewhere." She mutters something behind the gag, and Ben (he will henceforth be refered to as Ben) asks sarcastically, "What was that? Was that 'Sorry for being a bitch'? 'I'll be nicer now?'" Anyway, Ben goes on to get into a snarking match via mobile phone with Balthazar from Constantine, who is there trying to rob the vault, and is cranky because Ben has ruined his plan by getting stuck in there when he ran for cover during the robbery and the door closed behind him. There's a lot of completely genius moments, but my personal favourites are the scene where Ben gets Balthazar and the hostage negotiator, Officer Degepse, on a conference call and cons Balthazar into apologising to Degepse and Degepse into accepting the apology, before being distracted by Jessica and hanging up after telling them to "talk among yourselves," and the moment when Balthazar's 'phone battery dies, prompting him to walk out of the bank, hurl his mobile at the SWAT officers surrounding him, hitting Degepse in the head, and then staring at them for a long moment before walking calmly back inside.
Carnivale

Seriously guys, why have more of you not watched this yet? If you liked Twin Peaks, American Gothic or Eerie Indiana, you should be watching Carnivale. Beautiful Nick Stahl takes time out from screwing up bank robberies in order to play the worlds unhappiest Avatar of Light. Ben wanders around looking miserable and confused, pausing occaisonally to shag Clea Duvall and Adrienne Barbeau, pretty much making him my hero for life. Meanwhile, Clancy Brown proves his evilness by making a mean paedophile dude kill himself (what?) and totally wanting his sister, while Cynthia Ettinger and Tim DeKay have pretty much the hottest on-screen romance that I have ever seen, ever. This is basically Twin Peaks if it was on HBO and took place in a travelling circus with strippers. It's awesome, and you should all be ashamed for not loving it like I do.
The 4400

I have pimped this in way more detail here, but this is basically Heroes if Heroes had a cast where everybody could act instead of leaving the beautiful Pasdar to struggle on alone, and the characterization, dialogue and plotting didn't totally fucking suck. In brief, a giant ball of light appears over Seattle, and from it emerges a whole mess of people who have disappeared over the last 60 years. They haven't aged a day, and some of them have come back with magical powers. A beautiful, earnest government agent dude with a penchant for being in a shower whenever an important plot point comes up investigates. There are flavours of man-hottness to suit every palette, and oh, it's quite a good show too.
Profit

Speaking of the beautiful Pasdar... this is pretty much him wandering around naked, with messy hair and too much eyeliner, while being evil in a variety of ways and narrating about how evil he is. Oh, and sleeping with his mum. AWESOME! My favourite bits are when he persuades a woman to go back to her estranged husband, even though he knows that the dude is a total psycho who will probably kill her, because it's the only way the husband will sign a deal that means more monies for the Pasdar, and the part where he deliberately traps another character alone with the uncle who molested her when she was thirteen, and then is totally smug and gleeful about it in the voice-over. That's some cold shit, the Pasdar. And I love it.
Wasting Away

You guys, this is simply the best zombie movie EVER. Yes, better than Dawn of the Dead. Yes, better than Shaun of the Dead. Yes, better even than if they made a movie of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and somehow were able to travel back in time and get thirty-year-old Colin Firth to star in it. The premise is that a bunch of people get infected with Zombie, except they don;t know that they're zombies and they think everyone else is all crazy and high-pitched and runs around really fast. They meet this other dude who tells them that they're super-soldiers, except it turns out he's just this zombie caretaker dude and then he goes crazy and does a dance. Wendall from Bones and the guy from Tigerland who isn't Colin Farrell star. It's marvellous. Why aren't you watching it right now? In fact, why aren't I?! Fuck this list, I'll finish it later.

How To Rob A Bank

Dudes, it totally offends me that more of you are not talking about the greatness of this movie. It basically starts with Nick Stahl (aka Ben Hawkins from Carnivale) ranting about bank surcharges while trapped in a bank vault, then moves to him ripping the duct-tape off the mouth of Jessica, a saucy librarian type (saucy librarians are my favourite kind of librarian, FYI) who proceeds to verbally abuse him, which prompts him to snap "Whoa there, Skippy. If I wanted more verbal abuse, I would just call some customer service centre somewhere." She mutters something behind the gag, and Ben (he will henceforth be refered to as Ben) asks sarcastically, "What was that? Was that 'Sorry for being a bitch'? 'I'll be nicer now?'" Anyway, Ben goes on to get into a snarking match via mobile phone with Balthazar from Constantine, who is there trying to rob the vault, and is cranky because Ben has ruined his plan by getting stuck in there when he ran for cover during the robbery and the door closed behind him. There's a lot of completely genius moments, but my personal favourites are the scene where Ben gets Balthazar and the hostage negotiator, Officer Degepse, on a conference call and cons Balthazar into apologising to Degepse and Degepse into accepting the apology, before being distracted by Jessica and hanging up after telling them to "talk among yourselves," and the moment when Balthazar's 'phone battery dies, prompting him to walk out of the bank, hurl his mobile at the SWAT officers surrounding him, hitting Degepse in the head, and then staring at them for a long moment before walking calmly back inside.
Carnivale

Seriously guys, why have more of you not watched this yet? If you liked Twin Peaks, American Gothic or Eerie Indiana, you should be watching Carnivale. Beautiful Nick Stahl takes time out from screwing up bank robberies in order to play the worlds unhappiest Avatar of Light. Ben wanders around looking miserable and confused, pausing occaisonally to shag Clea Duvall and Adrienne Barbeau, pretty much making him my hero for life. Meanwhile, Clancy Brown proves his evilness by making a mean paedophile dude kill himself (what?) and totally wanting his sister, while Cynthia Ettinger and Tim DeKay have pretty much the hottest on-screen romance that I have ever seen, ever. This is basically Twin Peaks if it was on HBO and took place in a travelling circus with strippers. It's awesome, and you should all be ashamed for not loving it like I do.
The 4400

I have pimped this in way more detail here, but this is basically Heroes if Heroes had a cast where everybody could act instead of leaving the beautiful Pasdar to struggle on alone, and the characterization, dialogue and plotting didn't totally fucking suck. In brief, a giant ball of light appears over Seattle, and from it emerges a whole mess of people who have disappeared over the last 60 years. They haven't aged a day, and some of them have come back with magical powers. A beautiful, earnest government agent dude with a penchant for being in a shower whenever an important plot point comes up investigates. There are flavours of man-hottness to suit every palette, and oh, it's quite a good show too.
Profit

Speaking of the beautiful Pasdar... this is pretty much him wandering around naked, with messy hair and too much eyeliner, while being evil in a variety of ways and narrating about how evil he is. Oh, and sleeping with his mum. AWESOME! My favourite bits are when he persuades a woman to go back to her estranged husband, even though he knows that the dude is a total psycho who will probably kill her, because it's the only way the husband will sign a deal that means more monies for the Pasdar, and the part where he deliberately traps another character alone with the uncle who molested her when she was thirteen, and then is totally smug and gleeful about it in the voice-over. That's some cold shit, the Pasdar. And I love it.
Wasting Away

You guys, this is simply the best zombie movie EVER. Yes, better than Dawn of the Dead. Yes, better than Shaun of the Dead. Yes, better even than if they made a movie of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and somehow were able to travel back in time and get thirty-year-old Colin Firth to star in it. The premise is that a bunch of people get infected with Zombie, except they don;t know that they're zombies and they think everyone else is all crazy and high-pitched and runs around really fast. They meet this other dude who tells them that they're super-soldiers, except it turns out he's just this zombie caretaker dude and then he goes crazy and does a dance. Wendall from Bones and the guy from Tigerland who isn't Colin Farrell star. It's marvellous. Why aren't you watching it right now? In fact, why aren't I?! Fuck this list, I'll finish it later.

Oh my God, sometimes I just want to stab myself in the face to avoid being confronted by the fucktardery of the people around me. One of the brand-new fucktards on the team - I'll call her Pugfaced Chav, or PFC for short - actually asked me how to work out three percent of a bill. I was like, "Well, first you go back to school, in order to attain a basic fucking grasp of maths, you idiot, and then you throw yourself from a high building!"

I mean, are you fucking kidding me? The calculator on your computer even has a little percentage button! Christ, some people should never have been allowed to survive into adulthood.

Anyway, now I am watching How To Rob A Bank and it is beautiful - ninety minutes of Ben from Carnivale and Balthazar from Constantine trading insults through a bank vault door, could anything be more fun? I would totally watch a spin-off series based entirely around that concept.

So, prompted by the EPICNESS of Nick Stahl's suprising talent for snark in How To Rob A Bank, I declared today The Day That Was The Day, or for those of you who are losers who won't take advice, Carnivale Day. Dudes, I love Carnivale. I wish there was more of it. I wish there was a full six seasons of wacky allegory and wanton symbolism and Cynthia Ettinger's breasts. I want Tim DeKay's little crush on Ben and Iris being creepy as all get out. I want show-runners with PhDs in anthropology who assume everyone is as familiar with the concepts of Avataric lore as they are. I want to be able to sit there and go, "What is this shit? I have no idea what's going on!" and then give up and admire Nick Stahl's milky-white torso. I want to see Lodz come back. I want to find out what was up with that fuckin' bear. I want to find out if Sofie really does bring about the End of Days. I want Ben and Ruthie to get some closure. I want to see poor Ben's heart break when he finds out Sofie is the Omega. I want Stumpy to be... well, Stumpy, and I want to know what the deal was with Sampson and Management.

But, God hates me and Carnivale is cancelled. So I have to make do with whatever pieces of pure awesome I can find on YouTube. And these are pretty awesome. Highlights:

Ben, to Libby: Let's go kill some birds, I'm psyched!

Ben,to Lodz: I said not it! If the playround rules aren't in effect, this is anarchy!

Norman, to Justin: Son, you don't have bad luck. The reason bad things keep happening to you is because you're a dumbass.

Ben, painting up Ruthie's banner: I suck at this job.

The fact that "Ben" plays over the closing credits of the first link.

The COPS parody at the start of the second - triple bonus points for the sped-up shot of Gabriel picking Ben up while he kicks and flails and generally looks like a complete spastic.

And my personal favourite?

Justin: *GODZILLA ROAR*

Oh, also Psych is okay. I may write more about it later, but I may not. Who knows?

Oh, PS: I would have also wanted to see that creepy fuck Evander Geddes get his. What a dick, seriously.

Dudes. Dudes.

What is this?

And why wasn't it in Rome?

Why are Vorenus and Mark Anthony in bed together? Where is Pullo in all this? And most importantly, how come it's not on my DVDs? Help, dudes!

In other news, everyone should watch How To Rob a Bank, as it is marvellous and is basically just Ben from Carnivale ranting about bank surcharges while locked in a vault for ninety minutes. It's like someone made a film out of the opening scene from I Am The Messanger. In other words, it is beautiful and if you don't agree you're probably a rapist or something else bad!