Hello Blogosphere; "Crank"/"Crank 2: High Voltage"

I have made a New Years Resolution to watch every single movie in my DVD library starting in January of next year.  This will be the primary function of this blog, at least as long as I carry out that particular experiment.  Before and after that (and possibly during) I'll either post short but hopefully insightful reviews of whatever other movie I happen to be watching, or post whatever random thought pops into my head that I don't feel like posting on Facebook or Twitter or annoying whatever friend I decide to text at that moment.  One thing I will try not to do is turn this into a "woe is me" whiny emo kid ego trip slapped out there for the purpose of attracting attention to myself (hello, LiveJournal!)  Movies (or whatever portions of pop culture I feel most like discussing at that particular moment) shall be the order of the day.

For starters:

"Crank" (2006) and "Crank 2: High Voltage" (2009)

I recently watched both "Crank" movies in more or less one sitting.  (I had to watch the last half hour of the sequel, "Crank 2: High Voltage" the next day due to a freak power outage.  Thanks, black ice!)  I've been a fan of Jason Statham ever since I watched the first 15 minutes of "The Transporter" at my friend Matt's apartment and declared them to be 15 of the most fucking badass minutes of film I had seen at that point.  He went on to play basically the same role in every other movie: a guy who speaks very little (with a cool accent) but kicks a lot of ass.  So this is more or less what I expected in these movies.  I knew the basic premise of the movies (man is injected with poison, must keep adrenaline up to stay alive; or must keep artifical heart charged up via electric shock in the sequel) so I was interested in just enjoying 180 minutes of solid ass-kicking.  What I didn't expect was how completely batshit crazy these movies are in every conceivable way.  Imagine "The Transporter", "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World", "Grand Theft Auto", "Run Lola Run" and the video for "Smack My Bitch Up" by the Prodigy thrown into a blender with three Four Lokos, gasoline and some crystal meth.  Then light that blender on fire and throw it out the window of a moving car on a busy freeway.  That ALMOST describes the insanity of these movies.  Both movies are full of quick edits, loud music, odd special effects, extremely public sex and some graphic, very bizarre fight scenes.  "High Voltage" ups the ante significantly from the screwed-up-enough-on-its-own original, as its 90 action packed minutes feature a fight redered in claymation, an annoying but kind of endearing Japanese prostitute, and the final film role of Corey Haim (with a mullet!)  Words really can't contain the sensory overload of the "Crank" movies; they simply must be witnessed to be disbelieved.  Pure, concentrated fun.

This is what you're in for, folks.  Proceed at your own risk.