#videoport

                                                                                                                                  They are NOT on a roller coaster.

Dennis: I still work at this thing called a video store, which is a thing that still exists. Among the tens of thousands of DVDs from all over the world lining the shelves (it really is a great video store), there are all kinds of hazards for the aging, beleaguered video drone with too much time on his hands: unparented children with sticky fingers, modern Hitlers spoiling Cabin in the Woods for a store full of people, modern worse than Hitlers touching the shiny side of a goddamned DVD.

But when you work retail it's the little things that wear you down. Tiny, annoying details that stick in your mind, in your eyeline, like a thoughtlessly discarded movie in the wrong pace (because many, many people have a different concept of manners than do I), or a day when you notice every cover where Matthew McConaughey is dressed in pastel and leaning jauntily against a female costar.

But there's one entertainment trend that just pulls a guy up for a second, every time, a niggling, irritating speck of grit in the pudding. I refer, of course, to the abomination that is crappy DVD box art. (And for any of you who scoff, well then you have never worked at a video store- these things mount up over time...)

Examples:

Okay, here's the thing about these sorts of deals- they had all of these people together on the set. I mean, like, more than a little, right? Unless Messers Affleck, Cooper, Jones, Costner, and Ms. Bello just loathed each other and had some sort of contractual stipulation that, under no circumstances, could they be within 500 feet of each other at any time, maybe, crazily, they could have all been assembled for a class picture at some point. Instead, we get this cluster-fuck where it seems that every cast member has been photographed in front of one of those boardwalk cutouts where tourists in NASCAR t-shirts puts their heads through a "guy in a suit" standee. Seriously, look at Affleck- it's like he's in an even less-well-fitted David Byrne suit. And no one seems to be on the same plane of existence. Remember that episode of The Office where Michael Scott brags about his photoshop skills as we see the abortive office group photo transformed into an abomination where everyone looked like characters from NBA Jam with the "big heads" cheat code on.

AHHHHH- Snake Women!!! Kill them, Gene Hackman! Kill them with fire!!  Again, this is not a high school's cobbled-together video yearbook- this (admittedly terrible-looking) movie had a budget of 35 million bucks. Approximately six of which were spent at Kinkos to make the effortlessly-lovely Sigourney Weaver appear to be in mid Lair of the White Worm transformation and her costar into an even more blank-faced Blade Runner pleasurebot in need of maintenance. Seriously, Gene- nuke them from orbit, just to be sure.

That one. The one in the middle. You see it, right? Like you let your toddler cousin play with your GI Joes and he doesn't know how people are supposed to look and he hands them back to you looking like they've been hugged too hard by Frankenstein's monster? You see it, right?

The snake women are back!! Damn you Gene Hackman!  I told you to nuke them and now they're all over Canada!  Damn you to hell, Gene Hackman!!

Apart from the Company Men-esque neck/shirt disconnect, exactly what are Colin and Geoffrey doing to Ms. Bonham Carter here?  It seems a little inappropriate, until you remember that the award-winning actress' body is actually only the width of a piece of looseleaf paper. I'm fairly sure that's on her Wikipedia page...

Colin again. Let's set aside the severed hands holding those bouquets from off-screen. Let's just go ahead and assume both Jefferey Dean Morgan and Colin Firth have on monster hand apiece which they successfully hide in every picture. But is this the story of a couple being haunted by the British ghost of her ex-husband? Or is he in the Matrix? And why is he looking slightly to Uma's left, is he blind?  Wait! Colin Firth is Uma's blind, ex husband...who was accidentally loaded into the Matrix...and now he's trying to win her back, except he can't actually connect with her on this plane of existence!  Nailed it.