Here are a few of my YOUTUBE lip synchs. Enjoy.

"Argo fu@k yourself!"

ARGO (2013)

w- Chris Terrio
d- Ben Affleck
dp- Rodrigo Pietro

Ben Affleck has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that he can direct with the best of them. His latest film "Argo" should be the new gold standard on how to script, direct, and edit a thriller, and whip it within and inch of it's life into the tautest, most gripping edge of your seat-er in ages.
In 1979, The U.S. Embassy in Tehran Iran was stormed by militant student revolutionaries, led by the Ayatollah Khomeni, in retaliation for U.S. aid and comfort given to their hated, deposed dictator, Shah Reza Phalavi. 52 U.S. Embassy employees were taken hostage and kept in violent captivity for 444 days, from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981
At the time of the embassy takeover, a small group of six Embassy employees managed to escape the building and find refuge in secret at the Canadian Embassy. There they posed as "guests" of the Canadians and hunkered down to wait for a political resolution to the hostage crisis.
It soon became clear that since they were apart from the Iranian captured hostages and were unknown, they would never be included in an official rescue as the acknowledgement of their existence would endanger the Canadians and the official hostages. So the C.I.A., under the direction of specialist Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) devise a plan to spirit them from Iran. He will go in, posing as a Canadian Movie producer and give them all identities and credentials as part of a movie location scouting party making a crap schlock sci fi film called "Argo". They will receive faked papers and passports, memorize their new identities, and just sashay out of the country with Affleck as their leader. Sound insanely improbable to you? Well be assured, it sounded crazier to them, but it was a real incident, it really happened, and Mendez got special commendation from President Carter himself. The reason why you've never heard of this incident is because the story was classified top secret until just a few years ago.
What Affleck has done is taken the bare bones of the story and embellished it into a compelling movie. The facts are adhered to, but enhancements were made. For example, (spoilers) the airport escape sequence was not nearly as suspenseful in reality. In reality, they got out much more easily. The most tense moment was when the plane was delayed due to technical problems and they had to wait around in suspense. 

Well if you're going to fault Mr. Affleck and Co. for making the scene more interesting, compelling and exciting, then you might just as well fault them for trying to make a movie, as opposed to a documentary. One form requires non embellished truth, and the other begs for exaggeration. God, who wants to listen to someones' true, un-exaggerated account of anything? Spice it up, please!
Acting was uniformly great, and I must cite Alan Arkin's performance as the Hollywood producer enlisted to create the real background for the phony hollywood film. He and John Goodman, who plays famed Hollywood makeup man John Chambers, achieve a comic chemistry that warms and balances out the tension in the film.

Famed 20th Century-Fox makeup Man John Chambers (right) was in fact a long time secret C.I.A. undercover agent who provided the agency's deep cover operatives with alternate identities for ops in East Asia and the Middle East.

If I could change one thing about this film, it's Affleck's casting of himself as Mendez. Although his performance is excellent, I still would've preferred to see an actual Latino/spanish actor who looked a little more like the real Mendez in the role. But that is a minor nit to pick in a film that was so overwhelmingly excellent. I know that when it's released on DVD/BLU-RAY, that I'll be first in line to buy it.

The original poster art for the faked film "Argo" from 1980

The "D" ...is silent

Django Unchained (2012)

w- Quentin Tarantino

d- Quentin Tarantino

dp- Robert Richardson

The superb Jamie Foxx as Django

Even an O.K. Tarantino film is far, far better than the average movie fare available. That's not to say that "Django Unchained" is just O.K. - It's much better than that, but  it's not among the best of Tarantino.
Set in 1858, the film concerns the exploits of a freed slave, Django (Jamie Foxx), and his emancipator- a former dentist turned bounty hunter, named Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). The pair roam the countryside taking out "bad guys" that the government has put wanted (dead or alive) notices out on. Shultz develops a quazi paternal feeling of responsibility for Django and proposes that he 'll help Django find his wife, who was sold away at the same time as himself. They track her down to "Candie Land" - a plantation run by scuzzball Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), a man who passes his time forcing black gladiators to fight to the death. Django and Schultz devise an elaborate plan to liberate his wife from Candie's clutches.

There is much bloodshed and mayhem.

But it wouldn't be a Tarantino flick without it, right? Well a lot of people are grousing about the violent content in the film, but that's what Tarantino has used as his stock-in-trade since he started out with "Reservoir Dogs" back in 1992. In "Django" it's as prevalent as ever, but the manner of depicting the violence is cartoonish, almost parody of style, as if Tarantino anticipated the huge upwhine and is winking at us from across the screen. Bodies explode right and left from bazooka-like 6 shooters, gushing huge gouts of blood everywhere. At one point, a recalcitrant slave is literally ripped apart by dogs.And through it all Django remains unscathed, walking through dozens of men shooting at him, all of them missing, but of course he hits each one a single bullet apiece. This is, as I said, totally cartoonish, and that's what Tarantino DOES. And he does it damn well. Remember the Bride in "Kill Bill'? Case rested.

The performances are top notch here. Absolutely superb. Christoph Waltz proves that his astonishingly brilliant turn in "Inglorious Basterds" was indeed no fluke. He's given less to do here in a sympathetic role, but he's fine indeed, mixing the flim flam, fast talking silver tongued devil with that of a man motivated by ideals and compassion.
Now Jamie Foxx as Django. Oscar please take note. Again, Foxx demonstrates his ability to communicate more with his eyes in one look than any other actor can do with a whole page of dialog. He and Waltz have quite a bit of chemistry between them, and Tarantino always knows how to use chemistry among actors. Another of his stock in trade talents. Leo DiCaprio obviously had a lot of fun with his mega douchbag performance, and it shows onscreen and makes his scenes, particularly his dinner table monolog such great cinema. Samuel L. Jackson plays the real heavy of the film, Candie's valet/right hand slave, Stephen. He's nastiness, cunning deviousness personified. And of course Jackson plays it like only he can. Oscar....please note. There is a lot of controversy brewing about Jackson's portrayal of a nasty slave, and Tarantino's handling of the whole slave issue, as if he somehow is not treating it with the respect that is it's due as one of history's most shameful human rights violations. I don't see it that way myself, but the again, I'm not black, and so maybe I'm missing something.

DiCaprio as Calvin Candie - and his awesome churchwarden pipe

Samuel L Jackson as Stephen

My main problem with this film is in it's pacing and structure. The film lags in the middle-too much time is spent getting to Candieland and the meat of the story and then towards the end with the sequence with the Tarantino cameo. It needed to be much tighter. Perhaps we are seeing the effects of the loss of Sally Meineke, Tarantino's longtime editor and collaborator who died tragically last summer. The loss is most palpable, it seems to me.
It also seems to me that although I obviously know little, I do know that this film gets......  .....

Three and a half dopes