Curly goes Fishing, Catches Own Ass...

What's that guy's name?... Sherman Alexie! That's it. Well, I'm officially turning into my dad now. Thank God the internet always remembers the names of people and titles. But even the lone bard of Wellpinit agrees that this is his favorite Stooge film (Whoops, I'm an Indian!) as it reaffirms what he knows about the White man: the White man is a sarcastic person, to say the least, full of self loathing, finding his faults in other ethnic groups instead of in himself... something like that. Actually, Sherman and I would probably say that this is not the Stooge film we know and love the best, and they'll probably not even show it that often on Spike TV. It's Micro-Phonies, right? Is that still the odds-on fave of all Stooge-dom? Let's look on Curly's IMDb page and see what it says... The top four include Micro-Phonies, Disorder in the Court, A Plumbing We Will Go, and Violent is the Word for Curly. I'm in agreement on A Plumbing We Will Go... what kid wouldn't like that one? Of course, that one is a little bit insulting to African Americans... THAT'S what they call it? Dudley Dickerson is the black dude in A Plumbing We Will Go. Wikipedia calls him a master of "scared reaction" comedy. He gets bug-eyes a lot, in other words. They had a different guy in A Pain in the Pullman for that job.
But back to the racist insult we're currently looking at. We find the boys behaving worse than the worst Pawnee in the Old West. They're running a crooked game of chance in an unnamed saloon. In a bad case of set-up-itis, we see Larry adjust a magnet in his shoe... moccasin. Well, the Stooges were never one to confound an audience with unnecessary surprises like that. Larry's magnet trick is eventually rooted out, and the boys run out of town. Bud Jamison sets himself apart from the angry mob early in the proceedings with some lines of dialogue. He's using the accent that will later serve him so well in Dutiful but Dumb.
The law posts a $333.33 reward for the Stooges: dead or alive, preferably dead. The notice is posted on a tall tree. In the very same tree, we see stunt doubles for Moe and Curly. Moe says to Curly, "What did you do with the money?" Curly cheerfully replies "I threw it away so I could run faster!" Karmic balance has been restored, and is oh so hilarious. They soon find themselves off of the same tree. Back to the grueling business of survival. Moe decrees to Larry: "You get a moose, I'll get an elk." Curly got the following punchline from S.J. Perelman: "I'll get a Knight of Columbus!" There's a slight diversion so that Larry can get hit in the head with a bunch of pine cones, and one last one for good measure.
Following Moe's hunting orders, the two Horowitz brothers set about fishing. Moe sets up a great recurring gag, in which no fish is big enough. They're hard to reel in, though, and this requires the string-reeling sound effect they'll use later on in Dutiful but Dumb, when Curly's trying to reel in an oyster from his bowl of oyster soup using only a cracker and a whole spool of string. They never were much for fishing. Meanwhile, Larry's attending to the domestic duties inherent in tending the camp site. This won't be the last time he chops wood, only to have it fly up into the air, but I think it was the first. Wonder if he came up with that gag?
Let's see what the IMDb says about filming locations for this one, as they seem to be on location for the fishing sequences! Kinda cool... nope, no tab for filming locations. Wonder if they went to Hollenbeck Park on a weekday. It's probably more crowded on weekends. Well, the Stooges don't have too many bravura moments, but one with Curly comes close. Frustrated with catching fish the old-fashioned way, he decides on a 20th century technological approach, and marches straight into the river with a shotgun. We see several water-raising blasts, after which Curly marches triumphantly back out of the water, with a song in his heart, hauling a buncha fish on a line. Larry is unimpressed, but gets hit with said fish. Moe is also unimpressed, but only because he finally got the big fish he was waiting for. It promptly finds its way back into the river. Before he's able to administer a proper beating for this, another higher authority intervenes: that damn local sheriff. Curly pokes him in the eyes and makes a run for it. The three interrupt a picnic being held by three lovely ladies. This is no time for romance. The boys get into a canoe and row away as fast as its engine can carry them. Somehow I get the feeling we'll be seeing this canoe escape later on...
Act Two. Bud Jamison re-enters the picture. He comes home to find a note his wife has left him. His wife has run away with an Indian! Forbidden love! Bud becomes the stuff of Marvel comic super-villains, turning into sort of an Indian-hating Hulk, taking out his rage first on his table, then the world. The Stooges immediately poke their heads out from behind his cabin, and proceed to enter with hilarious consequences. Now, here's what sets this one apart from other Stooge shorts. Moe and Larry are still outside the house, Curly went around the back and went in. Moe knocked on the door, and a piece of wood above his head falls and hits him on the head. No taking it out on Larry! Very unusual.
Now, there comes a point in every Stooge film where a scene is longer than it should be due to budget constraints. You may have thought that the fishing sequence was it, and you'd be right, but the stalling is far from over. Moe looks out the window and sees the sheriff and his buddy approaching. Fortunately, born-again Indian hater Bud Jamison just happens to have three Indian costumes in his house. We don't see the Stooges go through the entire transformation, but damn close, and apparently without a script to work with. But aren't those the best moments of all, really? They manage to fool the sheriff, and they set about once again trying to feed themselves, breaking kashrut once again out of necessity since Jamison only has bacon. Jamison returns home, telling the Stooge Indians that it's one thing to steal his wife, but quite another to steal his food. Fortunately for the Stooges, Jamison's bark is worse than his bite, and the Stooges live to run away some more. And since they're pretending to be Indians, they all are going "Woo woo woo" and not just Curly. What a wasted opportunity that could've been.
Act Three. The boys decide their best course of action is to return to town in their Indian outfits, which makes me appreciate anew the plotting of Way Out West. It may be an overused cliché, but sometimes you need to rescue that stolen deed from the safe. Still, the Stooges have an ace up their sleeve. Bud Jamison RE-enters the picture, deciding to get drunk. He mistakes Curly for an attractive Indian woman. Curly and Bud Jamison get married by the sheriff. Jamison carries Curly upstairs to the honeymoon suite of the saloon. Oh, there's also a chorus line of dancers at the beginning of Act Three. Well, even the Stooges try to reach for that epic brass ring from time to time. Did I mention that somebody actually tries to carry Curly? Good Lord! You gotta be a strong guy to pull that off. Sadly, that's about as good as it gets here. Bud's beer goggles wear off, the boys run away again, and they end up locking themselves in jail. Not the best Stooge short, I'm afraid, despite the incendiary title Whoops I'm an Indian.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan
next week: Slippery Silks!

Auteur Watch - Archie Gottler and Jerome S. Gottler

Mixed N'yuks... the very idea. Well, I coulda sworn they were brothers, but apparently it's a father-son directing team. Frankly, no one could have seen this coming... sorry again. Must've been that 9/11 documentary I saw this weekend. Anyway, father Archie Gottler is the type of person I've often heard about, like Irving Cohen or the two guys in that Stan Freberg special. He's written over 80,000 songs for Ziegfeld, did a brief stint for Gershwin as a piano tuner, you get the idea. Composer of such classic hits as "Don't Forget to take your Comet Pills" and "The Fall of the Irish Boxer", he decided to broaden and expand his horizons into this new invention called "movies." And why not get the progeny involved? Little Jerome S.'s first gig was on the first solo Stooge effort, Woman Haters. Viewed by the effete intellectuals as a nice subtle dig against FDR seemingly turning every aspect of human life into a massive government jobs program, but ultimately viewed by the Gottlers and the public at large as a sorry excuse to see three idiots hitting each other. Frankly, the trail runs cold for both Gottlers after their run-in with the Stooges, young Jerome S. more so than the slightly more resilient father Archie. Jerome didn't work again until the 1950s, for God's sake! And even then, work was kinda intermittent. As for Archie, after working with the Stooges, he knew it was time to retire. He no longer recognized his show business that he thought he was a part of, so he wrapped up his remaining commitments and got on the trolley to home. Everyone's got a story, and now it's time to move on to the next one.

Bring this Jane Foster to me!

Why, it seems like forever ago that Kenneth Branagh was in a small independent movie with a bunch of talented unknowns called Wild Wild West. Oh sure, they didn't have all the latest fancy green-screen technology, or a single Oscar nomination between the cast and crew, and they had to cater their own meals... I mean, look at that cover! They couldn't even get the lighting right! Looks like the girl and the two guys aren't even in the same room together! But if you want to stay successful in showbiz, everything's a learning experience. But Branagh hardly had any learning to do. He was an early bloomer, a usurper to the throne of the great Laurence Olivier. Let's just think of this phase of his career as UN-learning, much like Olivier did in his later years. Marathon Man? A Jazz Singer remake with Neil Diamond? Truly a chance to apply the acronym WTF.
But this time I had the inside track on how Thor was going to do this weekend. On Facebook, all my Farmville ladyfriends were positively gushing over that latest slab of hunk... what's his name. Sam Worthington? Who cares, really? I have a feeling he'll eventually play the lead in the Chris Nolan biopic. I don't want to kiss and tell too much, but basically it was said that they were thinking of seeing Thor again. Boyfriends beware!
Meanwhile, Fast Five's still delivering a strong performance at #2... whew! Did that without a cheesy gas pedal reference. The latest Tyler Perry clone with Angela Bassett debuts at #3. Take that, John Sayles! Debuting at #4 is the latest Kate Hudson romantic comedy without Matthew McConaughey. Take that, Toke Boy! Where you leaning now? Meanwhile, John Krasinski and Brett Erlich got into a fake fist fight in a desperate attempt to promote the movie. No offense, guys, but ultimately the box office performance of the movie will still be "goin' down." And congrats on ousting that damn Conor Knighton, Brett! But watch out for usurpers to your throne: someone else will become the resident InfoMania movie expert now, and eventually will want something more. You can't do BOTH jobs full time... can you? Anyway, I'm already past the point where I brought everything full circle, so I better go.

The Three Stooges Make a Date with Disaster... so what else is new?

Ah... the Three Stooges as firemen. What could possibly go wrong? We find the boys are showering at the fire station, on the verge of getting fired by that mean bastard from that army one I reviewed a couple weeks ago... too tired to go looking for it now. In fact, he says "If this were the Army, I'd have ya shot at sunrise!" Of course, they don't get up that early. They get one last chance, and immediately get to work destroying the Fire Department. Meanwhile, the boss' new car arrives. What could possibly go wrong?
They start slow with a prelude to the damage to be inflicted upon the prized new car. Then, they move on to what would seem like the least necessary work in the Fire Department: washing the fire hoses. So far, my favourite gag has to be when Curly throws a rolled-up fire hose into the giant washpan, thereby splashing Moe with soapy water. The hoses finally get destroyed beyond further usability in what is clearly an "homage" to the big finale of One Week. They speed up their work to get to Maisy's house for pig knuckles smothered in garlic. Well, it was the Great Depression, as good a time as any to throw the ol' kashrut right out the window. The hose-washing operation ends up out on the street, at which point they had to redub. Must've been either too noisy on the street, or the microphones were just too lame.
Meanwhile, the three girls are awaiting the arrival of Curly. Could there be three more thankless token roles in showbiz? The fat chick is named Minnie... get it? Kinda subtle for the Stooges. Usually their comedy names are lawyers named I. Fleecem or presidents of the pest exterminator companies named A. Pest. Poor thing. She's looking for a boyfriend. She's got a good line: "The only way I can get a man is to call a doctor." Moe and Larry are back at the station doing a sink gag they'll do later in the brief interim between Shemp and Joe Besser... but I forget which one. Moe and Larry miss another fire call. This one was called by Curly. There's a complicated gag involving Moe's intent to eye poke, but it'd take too long to explain... ah, who'm I kidding? I've got nothing but time! They leave the sink on the Fire Dept.'s top floor, and crash their way through the bathroom door. The door falls down, and they cling to it, much like Billy Crystal in Throw Momma from the Train. In the Stooges' case, however, there's no decline to justify forward momentum. They slide towards the fire pole, fall down, and two dummies land on the bottom floor. Larry's head has sunk down into his coat. Moe takes Larry's cap off, ready to poke him in the eyes, but he can't! Larry's head has sunk down into his coat! He grabs him by his naturally curly locks and ratchets his head back up into its proper place. The eye poking is called off for the moment. Phew! I'm tired now! Anyway, the fire truck is on its way to Curly's fake call. Moe and Larry try to save their jobs... by taking the boss' new car to the call. What could possibly go wrong with this plan? They take a shortcut, and arrive at Curly's emergency call box well before the fire truck. They didn't get a chance to cause too much damage to the car, but I have a feeling they'll make up for it later. The six of them pile into the car and drive back to the fire station. It's at this point where they seem to have completely run out of script, and have to improvise. Curly seems to use his real voice when he tells one girl to "cut it out."
There's some fancy second unit car stunts before the inevitable giant crash. The car is covered in fake columns. Minnie ends up with a black eye, and finds herself in a slap fight with Curly. Well, it was a different era. The Farrellys definitely won't do that today... will they?
All right. I can't handle any more of the blow-by-blow play-by-play. I won't spoil the ending for you, but the boys end up driving off in a smoldering Bekins truck. I seem to recall that ending in another one... surprise surprise. Maybe I'll keep better track of those kinds of details someday. I guess this one isn't one of my favorites. At least, I haven't seen it a million times like some of them. Still, it's not bad. A typical signature Stooge film.

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Kato and his sidekick Billy Madison

Well... you think this is bad, just imagine what Kevin Smith was going to do with this. He never could get beyond the casting problems: who will play Kevin's Green Hornet? Dante or Randal? Dante, of course, is the natural leading man type, so you'd THINK he'd be The Green Hornet, but there's no denying Randal's alpha-male ... charm? Presence? Status? Well, as much as one would like to think so, you can't wear the baseball cap backwards forever. Even George Carlin knows that.
But why am I spending so much time thinking about movies not even made yet? Because I think Michel Gondry would have an appreciation for that, being the experimental film sorta guy that his resumé suggests. But I think with his take on The Green Hornet, well, it's much like the director shock some experienced over Pineapple Express. I haven't actually experienced it myself yet, but I'm told the film's more violent than people were expecting. So too with Hornet. It pushes the profanity boundary as far as PG-13 will allow, and the violence even more so... but that's what happens when a PG-13 film is north of a $100 million budget. Business is business. Which franchise was aligned with this again? Subway? Burger King? I meant to keep track of that. IMDb should! Work on that, IMDb.
I think I know why Green Hornet was stuck in development hell for so long. As a superhero movie, it's pretty much like most other superhero movies of late: gadgets, sidekick, rich kid, villain... and a lot of them are self-aware as well. No longer seems like a new wrinkle. But Rogen and Goldberg DID write that episode of the Simpsons! Turns out it was just a prelude. Rogen gets an upgrade here, if you look at it from the Funny People perspective. He's no longer Ira Wright: he's George Simmons now, by way of Billy Madison. George Simmons lost his joie de vivre; Billy Madison has his head permanently in the clouds, if the clouds were crystal meth vapour.
But the direction is not without its charms. Slightly more fanciful than the mercenary capitalism of Iron Man, there's a sequence where the camera pans around a giant garage full of fancy cars. Seth Rogen and his date stop at each one to kiss, moving on to keep up with the camera. Tom Wilkinson, one of the busiest actors in the biz, plays Rogen's unapproving father. He hasn't aged much in the 20 years the film skips over... I still say Jeff Garlin should've been the father.
Anyway, the direction. Gondry does what he can here. $120 million just doesn't go as far on the screen as it used to, but I did have an appreciation for the relatively restrained cinematography, courtesy of Michael Bay survivor John Schwartzman. I guess between Armageddon and Meet the Fockers, he's got the Hollywood thematic spectrum covered. Frankly, Gondry's restraining himself here as well. I was expecting more stop-motion animation interludes as with The Science of Sleep, but he sticks with pretty standard framing of the car, the mansion, etc. I admired the scene where the screen kept splitting off into separate threads, as the word went out amongst the bad guys in the movie. And I thought everything's already been done!
I would just like to mention one scene in particular. Every good movie... actually, most good movies have enough momentum written into the plot that they don't need a scene like this. The best example I can think of is the scene in They Live! where Roddy Piper does damn near everything he can to get Keith David to put on those damn sunglasses... there you go! A whole picture of it on IMDb and everything. More talented souls than me would say that that fight scene was epic. Some might even go so far as to call it... iconic. I still think it's kinda stupid. The stupid fight in The Green Hornet... SPOILER ALERT... happens between Seth Rogen and Kato, played by Jay Chou. Not John Cho of Harold and Kumar fame, incidentally. Kato knows martial arts, Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) SO doesn't, so naturally you'd think it would be no contest. Rogen starts out the fight strong, scoring a number of hits on Kato, even getting away with a fake ending of the fight, going "Okay, okay, fight's over..." and then throwing another punch... but Kato eventually takes charge of the fight, landing about twenty hits. You think it wouldn't take twenty hits to subdue someone like Rogen, maybe only five at the most, but he has lost a lot of weight, and he did work with Jody Hill on Observe and Report so he MUST know a thing or two about kicking ass. He drops Kato into a glass table which shatters, which slows him down a little bit. The fight somehow ends up as a draw... no, wait, it's coming back to me. The fight ends up in the pool. Kato can't swim, so Rogen ends up saving Kato's life with an inflatable lobster. Only in the movies. Fortunately, Kato is much better against bad guys.
It all just makes me want to watch Mystery Men again. Someday. There's also an homage to the tow-truck subduing of a vehicle from Heat. Dare I say there's an homage to the time Bart Simpson cut the head off the Jebediah Springfield statue? I dare so! Christoph Waltz is clearly enjoying the fruits of his Oscar win. Cameron Diaz... I can't help but think she deserves better, but A-Rod? Really? Hmm... I've heard the baseball player. Either way, I think she's doing fine. As long as she's saving her money. Whether she's 36 or 39, she still looks great. And of course, there's all the humanitarian work she does... she does, right?
Where was I? Might as well wrap this up. I didn't hate it as much as my viewing companions did, but I will say that a single star rating alone just doesn't cover certain movies. Cinematography: four stars, even though some of it might have been blurry digital video. I had a hard time telling. Those slo-mo bits of glass in the first scene looked pretty good. Seth Rogen: two stars. Jay Chou as Kato: three stars. Occasional flashes of ingenuity: three and a half. The ending: one and a half stars, even though I've never seen half of a car do so much since the 60s Disney flicks: Freaky Friday? Love Bug? Of course, they split the cars down the middle... should I have said spoiler alert again? I gotta go...

**1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Josh Gordon and Will Speck

Well, I hate to be so judgmental, but they're sure more handsome than the Coens, right? Although the one guy looks more like a car salesman than part of a dynamic duo directing team. Clearly the 90s were a time for doing everything they could just to get out of Cal-Arts. Isn't life hard enough, for God's sake? And, as so often happens, when they actually DO break out of the obscure middle with the other millions and millions of wannabes, you have a year like 1999 for John McTiernan, except for Josh Gordon and Will Speck they had one success and one failure. The success was the Will Ferrell and Napoleon Dynamite comedy Blades of Glory. An all-too perfect opportunity to use all their green-screen mastery they learned in film school. The failure was the ABC sitcom version of the Geico cavemen. When I used to be a DVD-burning madman I actually TiVo'd some of the episodes! Fabrice Fabrice was one of the cavemen? I gotta go back!
But Gordon and Speck weren't going to end up like Kent Alterman, a one-hit wonder. Will Ferrell goes through directors like you and I discard soda cans, but not Gordon. Not Speck. And so, Untitled Jennifer Aniston 2010 Project was bourne. Retitled The Switch, it announced to the world that Jennifer Aniston was ready to have a baby. But which Jennifer Aniston is it? The real-life flesh + blood Jennifer Aniston? Or the matinee idol Jennifer Aniston? Oh, but that's like asking every character Meryl Streep's ever played one unifying question. Can you really handle such a multitude and variety of answers? Egg-zactly. Alas, the world in general and the movie-going public in particular, just couldn't handle Aniston's awesomeness... at least, not until Just Go For It. Then it was back on board. Of course, when Aniston goes through directors, they tend to stay gone. Okay, I didn't double check that one, but it SEEMS true, and it's more of a basis than on which we went to war in Iraq. And so far, I don't see an upcoming project for G-eck! Guys, I think it's time you each took a long, long Ringo walk and thought about where it is exactly you stand at this point... okay, gotta explain the reference. You see, in A Hard Day's Night there's the...

Pimp my Quintet

Well, there's just no denying it any longer. Director Justin Lin is the new Spielberg. Or close enough to it. Or maybe we should look at it from a potentially racially-charged ethnocentric perspective. Antoine Fuqua was once shaping up to be the black Spielberg, Christopher Nolan's the British Spielberg, and now Justin Lin is the Taiwanese Spielberg. I mean, just like Fast 4, Fast 5 kicks some serious ass at the box office this weekend! I had a feeling it might; then again, I'm no boxofficeguru.com! That dude knows his sh...stuff. Peter Jackson, take note: you're in a similar situation right now yourself. You're basically rebooting the Lord of the Rings trilogy into a leaner, meaner duet, with all the same people 10 years later. This is how you git 'er done.
Coming in a very distant second is the Pixar wannabe, Rio. Somebody's already made the comparison, but Pixar is definitely Broadway, and PDI Dreamworks, and to a lesser extent, the Ice Age bastards. So if Pixar is Broadway, the way WAY off-Broadway entry this week is Hoodwinked Too debuting at #6. Brave title choice, following in the footsteps of Teen Wolf Too and The Jerk, Too. And Splash, Too. It's all Two Much, man.
At #5, it's Prom. Of course! The mistake that High School Musical made. Why water it down by making it about high school in general, and just focus on the prom? Makes me wonder. I thought MY high school prom was bad... what must it be like in Beverly Hills? So many beautiful people competing for so few prom king and queen slots... I smell an Adam Sandler comedy! The omega teen girl of Beverly Hills moves to Podunk, Kansas to be their prom queen. But after a bloody, brutal campaign against the local hick chick, she finally learns the meaning of life, moves back to Beverly Hills and drowns her competition in the pool... I mean, respectfully hits her with a pitchfork... nah, not comedy enough. Hooks her up to an automatic milking machine? Yeah, that's more like Sandler. To the Underwood!

Short Reviews - April 2011

Holy crap! My taxes...


Rio - First Hop, now this. I blame it on Rio!

Arthur - Remake fever is still sweeping through Hollywood, like a plague. It's a good thing the movies themselves can't go on strike.

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory - With Morris Chestnut as the black guy.

Half Past Dead - Finally! Under Siege 2 paid off...

Jerry Weintraub: His Way - Being rich is nice!

African Cats - Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, so... I've had it with these m/f-ing cats!

White Nights - I'll tell you how we won the Cold War... BALLET!

The Bang Bang Club - Not as great a title as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but what can one say? Originality is hard.

Niagara Niagara - Classic!

Europa Europa - A tearjerker.

Rochelle Rochelle - No, that was a fictional movie on Seinfeld.

Boeing Boeing - Got another one!

Gerald McBoing Boing - Does that count?

Dibbuk Box - Oh, Sam Raimi... where on earth did you get THAT idea? Oh right...

Burke and Hare - A film NOT of epic proportions

Burke & Wills - That's what I get for listening to the damn critics

Kate and Allie - Oh, Jane Curtin. You shed your sordid SNL past so thoroughly and completely.

Ollie & The Baked Halibut - A fish NOT in the bathtub! Just as long as it's not Lars and the Real Fish...

Eat the Peach - What's up with titles not explaining what the film is? It's about a dude riding a motorcycle... why not call it Ride the Bike?

Jumping the Broom - Oh, Angela Bassett... the things I got to go through to see you. Now you're doing Tyler Perry-lite!

I Am - Well, if I just had a box office debacle like Evan Almighty, I guess I'd be looking for answers too!

"Yeah, I like these little points..."

Ah, joie de vivre. Is there any human quality more associated with The Three Stooges than this? Watch how they dance-march into Paul Pain's sleeping quarters, thinking the room's for them, and tell me the simple joy of living and breathing is not at work there!
That and the eye-poking, yes. We find the boys living in theatrical apartments very, very far off-Broadway. Curly has an important economic choice to make: does he go for the long-term benefits of the showbiz-related services a monkey can provide, or does he go for the short-term benefits of cooking it and eating it? As always, the free market makes the proper choice... nah, that can't be right. But a Stooge always puts the stage before hunger, and before long Moe is grabbing Curly by the eyebrow and dragging him to his duty. Larry tries the Russian kicking squatting dance he always tries, and they all do that dance they do when someone gets an ice cube or an annoying insect down their back.
But they're not alone in the midst of the Great Depression, when all had to share uncomfortably close quarters. That the legendary Paul Pain has to put up with such childish nonsense must be a real comedown, but the Gilded Age had to come crashing down at some point. All that opulence... it just wasn't sustainable! Unlike today, of course. Pain crosses paths with the Stooges' show monkey, and it's hate at first sight. Moe ends up poking Pain in the eyes, admonishing him to pick on species his own size. The Stooges don't typically poke someone in the eyes outside of their triumvirate, and Pain needless to say lives up to his name. I know, it's probably spelled Payne, but it's too late to change now. There's a certain permanence and an honoring of tradition to the web, you know! Like I need to remind you, faithful readers, Paul Pain, the be-wigged heartthrob of millions, is played by the greatest actor of his generation, James C. Morton, in possibly his greatest role since The Midnight Patrol. What's so great about Morton is his consistency. With a Morton performance, a director knows exactly what he's going to get, and try as he or she might, it won't change from take to take.
But back to joie de vivre. Sorry, joie de vivre. Gotta always have that in italics for some reason. Reminds me! I gotta get that three pack of spaghetti sauce the next time I go to Costco. Anyway, the Stooges get very excited when Madame Showbiz calls, offering a job. In Panics of 1936, no less! Obviously, they haven't seen A Pain in the Pullman. That's all the panic you'll ever need. A representative of Goldstein, Goldberg, Goldblatt and O'Brien calls, if memory serves. So many times the Stooges have relied on this gag, but this time they have an ACTUAL living breathing O'Brien!! His name's Jesse De Vorska, according to the IMDb, and as they say, he's the real deal. Sadly, he left this mortal coil some 12 years ago at the tender young age of 101, having played such roles as the Jewish Football Customer in Employees' Entrance... I know. I couldn't believe it was him either. He also starred in something called Jewish Prudence. It's a shanda, I tells ya! I guess no one's in a hurry to remake that one these days.
Anyway, now that duty has called, much like the Okies in their covered wagons, the Stooges leave their roots behind, and attempt to escape their debts. We don't know exactly how far they have to travel to be in Panics of 1936, but it becomes increasingly apparent that it will be necessary to take a train. And I'm sorry, but even the government back then would be forced to admit that it's a necessary trip. It would also be necessary to totally rip off... I mean, pay homage to Laurel and Hardy's Berth Marks. Hmm! Wonder if any eyebrows were raised over the title back then. Moe actually SAYS the title at one point, and I guess it really, really wouldn't make much sense unless one were aware of the previous film. But while the second act of Berth Marks is minimalist to say the least, the Stooges make it positively Shakespearean in comparison. Just as the real story in The Polar Express is what goes on outside the train, the Stooges know that the real story is not that the Stooges sleep comfortably in the train on the way to their destination. And if you like seeing Bud Jamison hitting his head, you're in for a real treat! SPOILER ALERT. It happens no less than FIVE TIMES here!!! It's a little different each time, to be fair. Just think of it as the beating that Lou Dobbs should've gotten. Also, the monkey proves it's talented at one point. An elegant lady talking in her sleep says "Kiss me!" The monkey is next to her face, and it sticks its tongue out in response. Priceless. If it were a five second clip on YouTube, it'd have a hundred million hits by now. Somebody work on that. There's also an hilarious drunk who shows us why it's not just dangerous to run with scissors. The Stooges are eventually forcibly ejected from the train, but not for the reasons you'd think. As always, they're a victim of soicumstance, but they know the importance of making a grand exit, and while we never get to see them become the official panics of 1936, they for a brief instant become the panics of the open prairie. (SPOILER ALERT)

Next week: False Alarms!

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Greer and Jenniphr Goodman

Did I misspell that right? I just can't be bothered to look for a still from The Tao of Steve right now. Pics of the Goodman sisters seem to be rare on the internet. Go figure.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Time for another installment of Auteur Watch, where this year we profile all the hot brother/sister/mother-father-daughter directing teams of Hollywood. Up next, Jenniphr and Greer Goodman, because you've got to distinguish yourself somehow in Hollywood. This is the big leagues, man! Misspelling your name is a good start, but the novelty wears off quickly. There's also another sister, a Dana Goodman. All daughters of John Goodman... no, not the real-life Fred Flintstone, silly! John L. Goodman of Scarsdale, New York! Get it right, man!
So which decade was best for the Goodmans? Was it the go-go 80s? Punk hairdos, MTV, and Sally Cruikshank waiting in the wings? College seemed like it would last forever, but you gotta pluck your head out of the clouds and join the real world someday. Just ask Dr. Zhivago! Okay, nothing on the Goodmans' resumé in the 80s so we must look to the 90s. The Earth Decade, Nirvana, Dee-Lite, and Bill Clinton, and a little film called Europa Europa... I mean Niagara Niagara. What little I know. If I were real good I'd be able to rattle off ten to twenty films with the same word twice... Rochelle Rochelle?  Nah, that's fictional... Boeing Boeing! That's it! Anyway, this was a clarifying experience for the collective Goodmans. Hell, the All That Jazz guy's best days are clearly behind him. We're as good as HE ever was... why don't we direct our own damn movie? Three years later, at the start of the new Dark Ages, The Tao of Steve was bourne. A classic. Maybe not an IMDb Top 250 classic, but close enough. Will the male psyche ever be the same after this film tore its all-too-fragile edifice down? Surely the 2000s would shape up to be the bestest decade of all, if only for the Goodmans... well, maybe, just not in terms of film work. Where's the Sundance circuit? The honorary teaching jobs at NYU? Hosting IFC's special weekend they invented just for you? Well, there was the Cinderellas of Santa Fe... that was good! Basically, the Goodman's life story... Then there's Four Lane Highway. Just from reading the plot synopsis, this can be seen as the flip side of the same coin: the Goodmans trying to win back their former glory, doing some heavy drinking along the way. Nothing a couple swigs of social lubricant can't fix, esp. in Hollywood. Here's hoping the 2010s look up for you. Maybe you can be production assistants on the Spider Man 2 remake. It's coming, right? Make one yourselves! Be trailblazers, damn it!

Oh, Madea... will you ever win?

Well, Rio makes the box office its b'eatch once again, ALMOST crossing the 100 million dollar mark in its second week. If it were Ice Age 4 it'd do that within the first 36 hours. But that, of course, is not the big story this week. Tyler Perry's Spring 2011 project is out, and even though he apparently wishes Madea were dead, Madea is back with Madea's Big Happy Family, I believe it's called. And as you can see, they're copying the Godfather poster once again. Ah, delusions of grandeur. Personally, I would've gone with Citizen Madea or Madea-mento. Or maybe even Madea-ception. Something else from the IMDb Top 250... The Shawshank Madea-demption? This is slightly off topic, but I saw this photo of Camille Winbush at the Madea premiere. I remember her best from Ghost Dog, and to a lesser extent, Eraser. But in looking at this photo, and this photo... this might not sound right, but I think there could be a role for her as Michelle Obama in a few years! Oh Camille Winbush, will you marry me? I guess she gets that a lot. Speaking of love, that damn Water for Elephants debuted at #3. ONLY #3? What's the matter, Twilight fans? 'Fraid to pony up for your fave actor? Cheapskates. I'll bet the book Water for Elephants is based on is just as vacuous and youth-obsessed as the Twilight series is. The difference here: Hal Holbrook gets to play the old Robert Pattinson. That's right, Rob. Take a good look. That'll be you someday! Don't be the live fast die young type; that's such a cliché. Unfortunately, Halbert, there's no role for you in the final installment of Twilight as the old decrepit Edward Cullen... is there? According to IMDb, no. But the vampire rules have been so bent and twisted out of shape by Twilight and others by now, maybe it's possible. You can make it happen, Hal 8600. I believe in you, and so does your management!
Also debuting this week is another Disney Nature pic, African Cats. But we can see that on Nat-Geo at home for free! I mean, for the price of cable... you know what I mean. And at least the scourge of Your Highness has been swept from the Top 10. Thank Goodness! I gotta run.

Public Domain Entropy in the Court

Guess I better start having caption contests or something. Well, even though I, like all Stooge film collectors, possess exactly 5,000 copies of Disorder in the Court, each one with a different cover, I'm going to go with good ol' reliable YouTube for this one once again. This seems to be the first Stooge short where they've condensed the opening sequence with the three of them and the title card. They ran out of creative title card ideas or, more likely, trimmed some of the fat at Columbia. Do the Stooges REALLY need a separate title card? This is Cannery Row, mind you! We're having trouble enough with that damn Gable pic and he's just on the bus the whole time!
Anyway, I just love a good courtroom drama. We open with the finest actor that ever walked the face of the earth, the valedictorian of his high school class of 1902, James C. Morton, sporting a very, very bad wig. Tip: if you're an older gentleman, go with the grey wig. Make the sideburns match at least! Morton plays the guy that swears in all the witnesses and such. It used to be a separate job back then. And so, the prosecution begins in earnest. Gale Tempest, dancer at the Blue Iguana... I mean, the Black Bottom Café... oh, that's even worse! She swears she didn't commit that murder on February 13th. "Then WHO DID?" Objection. Grounds? Umm, isn't the prosecution supposed to have some idea of who committed a crime when they go to trial? I know, I know, there I go again looking for logic in a Stooge short. Old habit. Fortunately, Bud Jamison provides the objection, and he's sporting some serious eyeliner here. He mentions the jury, and the camera dwells on the jury long enough for us to have a hearty laugh. In this, the age of EXTREME short attention spans, it seems incredibly long.
My three main witnesses... the very idea. Jamison motions for a recess by telling the judge he'll be right back. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? The Stooges have gone out to lunch, and are now engaged in an epic game of onesies. Jamison takes all this surprisingly calmly. There follows a soon-to-be recurring gag with a comedy gate separating the trial audience from the trial. How many more have to die?
Speaking of dying, Curly gets sworn in at this point. It's five hours of my life... that I will cherish forever. The older I get, the more I like it when Morton screams "SIT DOWN!" at Curly. I don't know why. I must be a cynic.
The eye-poking sounds seem to make their debut here. Maybe it's me, but that sounds an awful lot like a hair getting pulled out of someone's head with a pair of pliers. So Curly gives testimony. I've never heard him so hep before! It's kinda unsettling, I hate to say. This leads to the next plot development: they 'act out' what happened at the club. Well, 16 minutes is a lot of time to kill. My next objection: Larry confuses Morton's wig for a tarantula that's crawled onto his violin bow. Panic sweeps the courtroom... at least, amongst the Stooges. Moe, in the throes of a serious fear transferral, steps on the wig, and grabs the gun of the courtroom officer and starts shooting at the wig. Now normally if this happened... never mind. This was the midst of the Great Depression, after all. Things were just different. Plus, we didn't have all these damn computers that are ruining everything nowadays.
On to Part Two. Sigh. They've replaced Zeta-Jones with a younger model in those T-Mobile ads. But they're using the guy from Burn After Reading! It's all Coen-nected. Anyway, the Judge warns the Stooges to control their "killing instincts." The older I get,... Anyway, Moe swallows the harmonica, leading to more hilarity. The re-enactment continues, forcing Moe to sharpen his killer instincts. He sticks Curly's head into a letter press and starts squeezing Curly's head with it. I hate it when they do that, but Moe gets his for that. And a bunch of other stuff happens. The prosecuting attorney seems to be the snooty director from Movie Maniacs! I'm too busy to look that up, though. Somebody else do it.
Anyway, my verdict. Let's get it over with. They stretch out the boring parts too much, but they manage to cram plenty of gags into the second reel. Bubble gum, a loose parrot, an out-of-control fire hose, it's got everything. And yet, it's not one of my favorites. Brideless Groom, on the other hand, a public domain classic! We'll get to that one in a few years.

good double bill with: Buster Keaton's Sidewalks of New York (1931), because the dialogue was TOTALLY STOLEN... I mean, you just might recognize some of the courtroom dialogue and action.  Personally, I think Buster does it better, don't you folks?

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Next week: A Pain in the Pullman... with James C. Morton as Paul Payne! The heartthrob of millions.

Auteur Watch - James Goldman and William Goldman

I couldn't find a photo of James Goldman, so I'm assuming he looks like Stacy Keach. Or is it Buster Keaton? William looks like a cross between the two. Anyway, this WAS going to be an episode of Auteur Watch, but somehow it's more tempting to ask the question: Who Kicks More Ass? Now, I'm assuming one wouldn't skip a beat and say with 95% confidence that the answer is obviously William. I mean, two Oscars! Some of the most beloved films of all time, most of them with Robert Redford. Butch Cassidy, All The President's Men, Princess Bride, what have you. Truly, an ICON among screenwriters... isn't that the goal these days? Either that, or I've just got a serious case of iconomania on the brain-ia. I've been looking at too many of those damn Facebook ads lately. Date supermodels! Date icons! Okay, focus, Movie Hooligan. Focus. Anyway, William, duh! Two Oscars, so many beloved films, he kicks ass.
But then again... you've got James, and he only one won Oscar, but he got his first! Nyaah, nyaah. The Lion in Winter, baby. Chicks dig that kind of historical romantic crap. James also created the band They Might Be Giants, which is very cool. And does White Nights have as big a fan base as Dirty Dancing?... probably not. Still, it was the 80s, baby, back when Taylor Hackford did more than just sit at the Oscar ceremony looking bored, trying to keep people from gawking at Helen Mirren. Full-time gig, my friend. She's the hottest GILF on that block. James has passed on to the great Underwood in the sky, so I can't speak too ill of him, but he seems to have gracefully ended his career. William seems to be ending his career on his knees, trapped in the Stephen King ghetto. Not to mention he's responsible for Heat... the bad one.
So how about it? Which Goldman brother kicked more ass in this life? William or James? Or William James? As always with these testy issues, I leave it for you to decide, dear reader... just kidding. Yeah, it's William. GOTTA RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Blame it on 'Rio'

Boring DVD cover. They couldn't go with the tawdry 80s poster for the movie. Anyway, never blog and eat at the same time, kids. Big mistake. Seriously, though, at the box office this week, Hollywood super-genius Carlos Saldhana has worked on three Ice Age pics, so it's time to go someplace warmer, spicier. And, surprise surprise, Rio was bourne. Wonder if it's based on a true story, but watered down by Pixar sentimentality conventions still placed on all high-falutin' all-CGI pics like this? No matter; the point is it's a bloomin' success. And I had the chance to get in on the ground floor of that action, too! But as usual, I missed out: I forgot to visit the Rio FarmVille farm this weekend for my special prize.
No, I'm not bitter, just totally jealous. And so must be Kevin Williamson, the John Grisham of the self-aware slasher pic. Oh sure, everybody knows the award-worthy Scream franchise, but for me, it was Teaching Mrs. Tingle that had me at hello. Good title! Alas, the public was only about half as clamoring for Scream 4 as the filmmakers thought. No, it's Pixar-ish babysitters for them, unfortunately. The real victory, of course, was getting recently broken-up David Arquette and former friend with benefits Courtney Cox back together again for one final show. Or did they do Scream 5 simultaneously as well? If they were good, planned ahead and did their due diligence, they did, just like Matrix 2 and 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3, and Back to the Future 2 and 3, of course. This is why I should read Variety more.
Those are the only debuts this week. The rest are leftovers. Limitless is hanging in there, which is interesting to me because, in looking at my weekly box office spreadsheet, it's the only film to survive the four week mark this week. The three week films are both gone: Wimpy Kid and Sucker Punch. Something for the ladies, please! Not wimpy kids or wimpy girls with machine guns, they need their Brad Cooper! Sorry, ladies, he's getting back together with Jennifer Aniston. Oh, wait. Brad Cooper, Brad Pitt... more salt in the wound! They broke up again. I can't keep up with all this Hollywood relationship politics. I'm so outta here.

Let's put the X in Hex

Why not a Kiss reference? That's the best I could do, headline-wise, or whatever you call that part of the blog entry... Title, it says. We also would've accepted "All my Hex's live in Texas..." So cornly, so dumb.
Anyway, I couldn't help but notice my fellow critics really hatin' on ol' Jonah Hex. But, I dunno... I kinda liked it! But I'm perfectly willing to admit that there's not a lot to like here. But between this and True Grit, Josh Brolin owned the Western in 2010. Oh, he got his Duke on! Am I hip enough yet? I'm thinking the critics just don't like Megan Fox all that much, even though she's kinda purty. Wonder if they liked Passion Play at all. No one's reviewed that yet. I'm assuming Mickey Rourke plays the trumpet player with a heart of gold. Bad casting. He's supposed to be the ruthless gangster that we can't help but love! What was he thinking? Incidentally... and I got this from an IMDb Trivia page, so you know it's true, but Megan Fox plays Lily in Passion Play and Lilah in Jonah Hex, so you know she's got range.
But let's get back to the Hexster. Something about the casting of this movie that's just plain wrong. For example, Oscar nominee Michael Shannon is apparently in the movie, but I failed to recognize him. Guess I'll have to watch it again. He's definitely a chimera of sorts: voice of Steven Wright, hair of young Willem Dafoe, eyes of Steve Buscemi ... if Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe were somehow able to have a kid, that's what he'd look like. Also, Tom Wopat was in the movie. Now a lesser movie would put him in a wagon, have that wagon get run off the road and go flying over a river, Confederate flag prominently displayed... but not this movie. But I did suspect that the one character was the Fitts boy from American Beauty. Oh, if only his career soared as high as that character did... kinda like watching Animal Mother make do with his tiny, tiny part in Independence Day. What a comedown. Oh yeah! And Will Arnett so playing against type. Why, Putty might as well have been in the role... but he probably would've sneaked in some of that ol' Putty magic. As for Brolin himself, well, when they remake Raising Arizona, he's more than ready to play Leonard Smalls, the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse.
On to the plot. Co-written by Neveldine & Taylor... yes, THE Neveldine & Taylor. Better add them to my Auteur Watch series, huh? Frankly, the film didn't stray too far beyond a reboot of 1999's other failed sci-fi Western, the Wild Wild West, as I first assessed the very instant I saw a trailer for Hex on TV. Let's face it: not a lot happened of big dramatic import just after the Civil War. I would've had more respect for this film if they showed President Grant with some kind of liquor bottle at his desk. Oh, but the playing hooky with history doesn't end there, of course... check the Trivia and Goofs page. They know more than I do. But I did catch an homage to that short cannon Buster Keaton used as a comic centerpiece in his classic The General. Anyway, as with Wild Wild West, a maniacal Southern bigshot returns from faking his own death to become a Bond villain, using a 19th century super weapon. This time, Quentin Tarantino... I mean, Turnbull sets his sights a little higher than Arliss Loveless, and goes NOT after the historic joining of the Trans-Continental Railroad, but rather after the White House itself. Jonah Hex is hunted down by the President's men and employed to go after Turnbull... for personal reasons, of course, outlined at the beginning of the film. Hex goes to the friendly neighborhood Gatling gun shop to armour himself to the teeth.
One thing I did notice was a certain monotony of the giant explosions in the film, of which there are several. A town gets blown up (by Hex), several train cars full of passengers gets blown up (by the baddies), and Hex uses dynamite arrows to blow up the bad guys, among other things. Also, the "super weapon" gets tested out on a small Western town before going to D.C. Here's the twist: it's not explained why it's particularly super or special... just that it takes an extra-long conveyor belt to load glowing spheres into place. The glowing spheres make special oversized cannonballs explode... again, none of this is explained. Sorry; should I have put 'Spoiler Alert'?
Oh, and Jonah Hex can resurrect the dead by touching them... yes, just like Pushing Daisies. My viewing companion didn't know that, though. And frankly, how often is Pushing Daisies going to be repeated on HBO? Egg-zactly. But if Sonnenfeld doesn't mind this concept being blatantly lifted, no one will. Oh, and I almost forgot: I forget what it was now... I think it was Turnbull's hideout, but it felt an awful lot like the black gate of Mordor from Lord of the Rings, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one. The music seemed to think so as well. And of course, a "police ship" so swiftly intercepting the enemy ship... a tad too contemporary. And the way the police ship is removed from the picture... did anyone else think of Gary Busey's demise in Under Siege 1? Just me? Thought so. Never mind.
So to summarize. For some reason, I didn't find this to be the subject of such scorn and ridicule as, say, the Onion, and Ebert at least gave it two stars. Others weren't so generous. I just didn't think it was as bad as all that! Corny, yes, but not totally unwatchable. Sure, cinema in general is declining because of all this damn CGI, but the cinematography here was pretty good. Pretty slick. And if it was filmed on digital video, it sure looked like film, and without the streaking effects of bad digital video. Maybe if Josh Hartnett was in the lead role instead of Josh Brolin it would've skewed better with the Slim Jim set. As for me, I probably won't see it again... unless someone gets it for me on Blu-Ray! (hint hint...) Sigh. I never get freebies. I'll let you know when I do, though.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Moe knows how to cock a cannon...

Oh, you know THAT's going to get a response, probably from the pervs! I swear it's in this week's Stooge flic, Half Shot Shooters. I'm leaving out the hyphen here because it wasn't in the title card. Another Stooge war epic. How many they have yet to do. This one covers the two World Wars, no less! We start in 1918 with some great stock footage. I imagine Columbia got it from somewhere on the cheap. That's Poverty Row for you. And of course, if only because it's funny, the Stooges are asleep in the foxhole. Well, eye gouges and face slaps burn a lot of calories, and a Stooge needs much more sleep than the average person. As we all know, there are no atheists in foxholes, but there are three sleeping Stooges, and not just for the 12 days of Christmas. Their Sergeant rudely disturbs their sleep, informing them that the war's just ended. Good screenplay trick! The Sergeant proceeds to give Curly and Larry a black eye, and twists Moe's arm. The black eyes are lingered on for a reason. Through some terrible bureaucratic mishap, the Stooges get medals for valor. Black eyes count as being wounded in battle. Reminds me of all those pre-Tea Party types trying to devalue John Kerry's Vietnam medals. Oh, I hate it when I think about things like that, but I will say the Stooges' revenge on their Sergeant seems a little over the top. Curly finds a board with nails sticking out of it, and hits the Sergeant in the ass with it. Long story. Watch for yourself. Somehow that violates the Stooge code, but it all pays off later.
Flash forward to 1935 and the Stooges find themselves moving a lot slower. The fact that their shoes have no bottom probably doesn't help. They run afoul of a dining Vernon Dent, get chased down the block, and find themselves re-enlisting in the Army. And guess who they meet? The weird part is no one seems to have aged a day, let alone 17 years. Hey, give me some of what they're taking! I guess that's Act Two. The Sergeant gets revenge on the Stooges' revenge, and we get an hilarious hard-of-hearing misunderstanding sketch that seems to go on longer than it should. Well, 16 minutes is a lot of time to kill, as it turns out. The Stooges are deafened by a gun shot; another long story. Another officer questioning the Stooges after they've lost their hearing says "Are you prepared to defend this republic and..." Moe replies, "Republican? No, I'm a Democrat!" You know who you are, but if that doesn't force you to abandon this review or the Stooges in general at this point, nothing will. I thought the Stooges rose above or below politics myself, but there it is! It's public record now.
Act Three: time for some training on the big gun. It's been 17 years and there have been some advances in warfare technology since World War I. The Stooges are sent to get powder and shells for the gun. It's at that precise moment that target practice is called off, but the Stooges are nothing if not efficient task completers, especially if there's a big comedic payoff later. They come sailing in on a wagon full of powder and shells, singing that old song they seem to sing a lot... hold on, let me see if I can Wikipedia the lyrics or something... this seems to be it. Poor ol' Ted Healy. Wonder whatever happened to him. Anyway, the Stooges take the bull by the horn and decide to go through with target practice, leading to an hilarious finish. Personally, I think Boobs in Arms gets the formula right, but that's just me. Or maybe it's just a funnier title.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Next week: Disorder in the Court... oh, for God's sake. Where am I ever going to find a copy of THAT?!!

Auteur Watch - Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel

I wanna see if MGM has any lawyer power left at all... They probably would get on my ass for the following still from Little Monsters. Incidentally, the writers of that film, Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio seem to sorta occupy the Hollywood slots that Ganz and Mandel used to occupy.
Anyway, time for some more theorizing on favourite decades and such. For partners in writing Marc "Babaloo" Mandel and Lowell Ganz, which is it? Is it the lean and hungry 70s? The crucible of icons? Afros, bell bottom jeans, goldfish in the heels of your shoes, the whole ball of wax... in the lava lamp? What a time to be writing for television. Laverne and Shirley, oh the stories they could tell. These two were surely leaving the ranks of the Doomed to become the Screwheads of tomorrow! Work in TV was the low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking... or was it more like being fed grapes by beautiful busty wenches while lounging in comfy chairs? Alas, they knew this easy life was not all they wanted out of life. Then it was the go-go 80s, the Reagan Revolution, Iran, Granada and the Contras. The fall of Percy Ross and the rise and rise of Donald Trump. Does he not miss Leona Helmsley, his shadowy reflection? As for Low and Bab, they were ready to move into the A-list, but they knew the writer's place in Hollywood, and that's far, far away from the paparazzi and the flashing lights. They knew how to turn their big blockbusters into semi-successful TV shows. Apparently that's where the real money is made. They were also ready when the former wild and crazy guy Steve Martin was ready to mature into the semi-wild, semi-crazy father figure, and Parenthood was bourne. So too, the TV series. The 90s looked even more promising. City Slickers, A League of Their Own - Good! Mr. Saturday Night, meh. Still, there was something about that Billy Crystal. Michael Keaton was their 80s man, Crystal the 90s man. And so it went. Then Matthew McConaughey came along... would he be their 2000s man?... Apparently not. And clearly they're slowing down: no EdTV sitcom? I guess that's YouTube's job now. Surely the 2000s aren't their favorite decade. The kids are growing up and off to college... and now the work's REALLY slowing down. Where the Heart Is? Puh-leeze. Every comedian's dream is to be taken seriously. Take Al Franken and When A Man Loves A Woman, for example. What's that all about? The fall of Ganz and Mandel surely echoes the fall of democracy itself in the 2000s. Become a robot or a sports fan or die at your own peril. And so the Democrats would have to go underground for a while... until 2006! Yay. As for the writing team of Gan-del... Tooth Fairy? Seriously? Seriously, time to retire, guys, if you've really fallen that far out of favour with Ron Howard and the Happy Days bunch.

Hello Hanna!

Say goodbye to the 47 Ronin... say hello to the one Ronan! Ronan the Barbarette, baby! This albino hit girl's balls to the wall in the kick-ass department! ... oh, wait. It only debuted at #3. That's no good. Hop maintains its pace against the other turtles and stays at #1 for a second week in a row. The new Arthur reboot debuts at #2, even though Helen Mirren hosted SNL this weekend. Apparently, the SNL crowd just isn't the movie-going demographic anymore! Their parents are anti-fun, apparently. Hanna almost qualifies for one of those movies that people do in-between the big franchise pictures, except the Before pic in this case was almost 10 years ago! Saoirse and Blanchett are gearing up to do The Hobbit now. Other examples include: Mad Love with Chris O'Donnell and Drew Barrymore before they did Batman 3 together. Keanu did a bunch between Matrix pics: Me and Will, The Replacements, The Watcher, The Gift, Sweet November, and Hardball with Chris Matthews... I mean, Hard Ball. For Johnny Depp, it's hard to say what counts in between the Pirates pics (2003-2006). The Libertine and ...And They Lived Happily Ever After are the only small pics he did. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Finding Neverland? Big pics. Corpse Bride? Relatively small big-pic with big people behind the making of it. It's all relative.
In other news, the third debut of the week is Soul Surfer. Why does this seem like a documentary? ...oh, right. Sorry, folks, but I didn't do my homework again. It's based on a book by someone named Bethany Hamilton. It's an inspirational story, I guess. Not Rosa Parks-type inspirational, but at least someone's out in the fresh air! I'm like most and spend too much time indoors. Besides, don't feel too sorry for Bethany. She presented at the most recent Country Music Awards. She's bonafide now! She'll never be alone again with the country-western crowd. And finally, our last debut this week is the Medieval stoner comedy Your Highness. Well, even though it debuted at #6, I wouldn't despair on behalf of the filmmakers. After all, The Big Lebowski tanked when it was first released... and now look at it! And besides, by this time next year, Danny McBride's going to have his own shelf, nay, his own WING at my local video store. He's just that beloved. But when does HE get to present at the Country Music Awards? He's a Georgia peach! I guess the terrorists win after all.

The Three Stooges: On Maniacs and the Movies

Ah, another childhood favourite. This one was on either volume one or volume two of the ol' VHS compilations... I think two. Volume One had Dizzy Pilots, A Bird in the Head, and Three Sappy People. Volume Two had Movie Maniacs, Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise, and... one other. Clearly not enough for a young budding Three Stooges fan, but those are the breaks.
Anyway, on to the plot. We start with a train; always a promising start. The Stooges find themselves in a shipment of furniture bound for Hollywood. A fitting place for the Stooges to find themselves in, but it's the destination that should worry the Hollywood status quo. Act One involves the boys getting ready for their West Coast debut. Larry tries pressing Moe's pants. Will it go smoothly? Meanwhile, Curly is attempting to make the world's largest pancake. Will THAT go smoothly? If you answered yes to both, you're either being Dave Barry-esque ironic in a post-modern world or, worse yet, you need to do your homework. Start here at YouTube. Ah, YouTube. You'll spoil us all.
Act Two: the boys find a home at Carnation Pictures. They didn't want to go meta and try breaking in to Columbia. Apparently, a made-up studio was more prestigious than Columbia at that time. They have a little trouble getting past the keepers of the studio gate, but a narrow window of opportunity opens up for them. Plot devices abound, helping the boys to get to where they need to be at precisely this right moment. Can you guess what it is? Just like in Pop Goes the Easel, the powers that be are expecting three men. In the case of Movie Maniacs, three New York executives are coming to take charge of the studio. The boys more or less pass for the executive type; Curly is prepared with novelty-sized pens and pencils. Bud Jamison plays Fuller Rath, the beleaguered chief of Carnation Studios... great comedy name!
The Stooges are dispatched right away to a Carnation movie set, and proceed to destroy a perfectly normal melodramatic picture. The power goes to their heads and they end up driving the director crazy to the point of quitting. His actors quit in protest as well, which does not bode well for the power-starved Stooges. Curly in a blond wig ends up playing the woman's role, with Larry as the dashing, bald-headed leading man. The script is also redone, and Larry and Curly also end up doubling as their own stunt doubles. I should probably mention that Curly is at his high-pitched best here, providing that special brand of manic energy that only he can.
Act Three. Rath gets another message that the three New York exec's plane is stuck on the tarmac due to fog. The Stooges' short tenure as the hot young Orson Welles on the block is officially over. As the gathering hordes of studio security assemble, Moe says "I think our genius ain't appreciated here. Let's scram." The movie crew around them seems to try and grab the Stooges, but alas, their anarchic power is much too forceful and overpowers the crew. They run away only to find themselves literally in the lion's den. MGM tried to stop this scene, but obviously failed. The boys then have to run away from the lions. Fortunately for them, they're always one edit ahead of the lions. Movie magic!!!

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

next week: Half Shot Shooters!!!!!

Auteur Watch - Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer

What's Craig Mazin got that these two haven't? I guess he's a Beta Male or lower, because the Zuckers just can't handle the awesomeness of this Dynamic Duo. So young, so prolific, so timely, so scrambling to stay on that bleeding edge of satire that The Onion and The Daily Show does so much better. But there's a timelessness to film, a permanence that only a film buff could respect. Having triumphed with the slim profit margin of Spy Hard, it was time to spoof the Scream juggernaut with the first two Scary Movie pics. But Keenan Ivory had to grow as an artist, didn't he? On to the Zuckers who breathed new life into the series... and AGAIN with Charlie Sheen! He's EVERYWHERE!!! He's the new Kevin Bacon, man! But his name doesn't rhyme with separation, so he's chopped liver. Around the time of Scary Movie 4's diminishing profit margin, it was time for Fried-ber to expand their vision, moving quickly on to other movies to parody, and direct themselves, damn it. Eliminate those pesky high-paid middlemen. But what to parody? How about date movies? No one's ever made fun of those before! Or epics! Thanks to CGI, we can do it on the cheap, just like the actual epics now. Now they're stuck with vampires like everyone else now, including the Hillenbrands. Well, sometimes you just gotta pass on directing Dorm Daze 3.0 for doing that passion project of yours.
What does the bright future hold for Seltz-berg? Who knows. They're in the driver's seat with green lights as far as their eyes can see... how about spoofing Justin Bieber? Or that new Friday song? Ripe targets, indeed.

Headline: Easter Bunny turned into Secular Terrorist

The mailman won't know what to do. Did you think about the mailman when you did this? ... All I'm saying is this is the kind of thing the Simpsons warned us about. Maybe they could make a movie about Jerry Hall! You know about Jerry Hall. He was so small, a rat could eat him, hat and all. Get David Mamet and Steve Zaillian to do a treatment, we'll make millions.
But the REAL showbiz news for the week is the rise of the stand-up comedians. Apparently, Charlie Sheen bombed in Detroit, and the Lame-stream media's all raggin' on him. He probably shouldn't have opened with "What's the deal with Jews in show business?" but he figured Detroit could use a good laugh, and would be willing to share his pain over his $hit-com on CBS. What's Charles doing so wrong that Jim Belushi was doing so right? Eight seasons, Jim! Not bad! Hope you got a piece of the syndication. That's where the big bucks are. Meanwhile, comedian Russell Peters steals the show in Source Code at #2 this weekend. Oh, I'm telling you, kids, the early 2000s were the real Renaissance in movies for computer nerds. A.I., Swordfish... I want to include Hackers in the list, but that was 1995, and Angelina was in it. It's just not the same. It never is.
In other news, there's an insidious new kid on the Box Office block at #3 in a movie called Insidious, stealing Wimpy Kid's lunch money down to #4. The wound is salted afresh. Will wimpy kids ever inherit the earth? Ooh! Lin Shaye's in it. Must be a New Line Cinema pic, lemme check... IT'S NOT! Lin's branching out! I'm shocked. Well, that's about it for this week's box office news. Unfortunately for Gore Verbinski, Rango wasn't #1 the first two opening weekends. Gore's streak is finally broken... expectations for The Weather Man were low. Pretty low.

Not to be confused with the Ant & Aadrvark cartoon of the same name

What did I just tell myself? Anyway, it's that time of the week again where we look at a Stooge film! Yay! Welp, with Ants in the Pantry, we start familiarly enough with a comedy name... and dolly in on it for good measure! Librarians named Bookman, pest exterminator business owners named Mouser, it's all good. They take it one step further by making him a Kraut. Priceless. He walks in on the boys playing cards and asks "Vas ist loss?" ...I probably didn't spell that right. I'd try using the special dictionary pronunciation font but that'd take several weeks, and you'd probably have to download a special 5 megabyte font just to see it. But don't kid yourselves, the Stooges got the comedy spectrum covered. The dizzy secretary says "Oh, they're in the next room discussing politics. One of them said, 'Let's have a New Deal.'" And they're actually playing cards! Get it? See, because... ah, skip it. Spoiler alert: Fox News devotees should probably stop reading now, it's only going to get worse.
Anyway, the plot: the Stooges attempt to drum up business for the flailing pest extermination company by handing out free samples to unsuspecting customers, if you will. Now, I've tried to cleanse my mind of the Stooge memes, but I think this is the first one where Larry does his "I can't see! I CAN'T SEE!" bit. In fact, Larry secretly steals the show here. Moe sets it up so that Larry's fist swings around and hits Curly on the head. Kinky! Also, he gets star treatment when he lets loose his set of pests. The capper is a string of ... I assume moths... from under his hat. Good double bill with that Don Knotts astronaut picture. And Larry with a hammer? Silver screen gold. Chivalry will have to take a back seat as Larry attempts to eradicate a mouse on a lady's back with a hammer. She's dancing with Curly and any good comedian knows it's not funny to hit a lady, even with a hammer. Then again, he hits two ladies on the foot with same hammer in a bravura sequence where he's chasing a mouse on a fishing line.
To pad out the two reels, there's a subplot involving Moe falling in love at first sight with a pretty waitress. Curly also has a bag of cats, and they're simply adorable. Still, this was the pre-Humane Society days when you could get away with those kinds of shenanigans.
I hate to say it, at least out loud, but I can type it here! Nevertheless, I think Pest Man Wins is slightly better. Well, the boys were more experienced when they made that one, but there was still some old footage from Pantry that would do in a pinch. But I will concede, and I'm too behind in my work to check YouTube right now, that Pantry's probably got the better ending, even though it's a little contrived, even for the Stooges. Lord knows the one thing you can't ask a Stooge to do is clean up the mess they've made, and quietly and/or discreetly, but the snooty party guests come to the half-correct conclusion that these three knuckleheads are obviously entertainers (from Vaudeville) that have come to provide a novel form of entertainment to these high society types. From there, they get invited on a fox hunt alluded to in the costuming. Curly has a bad cold on the fox hunt, mistakes a skunk for a fox, catches it and puts it in a bag. But the final surprise is: it's not just Moe and Larry that get blown away and knocked out cold by this!

Good double bill with: Hoi Polloi

Next week: Movie Maniacs!
The Three Stooges filmography at Wikipedia


***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Hey! Remember the 2000s?

Damn. I'm not set up for grabbing stills from Blu-Rays, I just remembered. And on top of it, my copy of Burn After Reading's gone MIA, so I'll have to settle for a still off the internet. Phooey.
Anyway, the film Fair Game... I never thought they'd be able to make a better film named Fair Game since 1995's Fair Game with Cindy Crawford, as long-time readers of this blog might recognize, but I must admit... I'm starting to change my mind! Anyway again, Doug Liman's Fair Game has characters asking a lot of hypothetical questions about sticky subjects: aluminum tubes, nervous Arab men on airplanes, nervous Arab men inside aluminum tubes, what have you. Here's the one the film poses: say you had to out a CIA agent in order to sell the case for war with the snooty, big-city New York Times-reading crowd. Who do you pick? Do you pick a low-level CIA member, or do you pick our equivalent of James Bond? And why? If only we were living in times when such a thing was the stuff of Michael Crichton fiction... no, wait, I guess it would be Tom Clancy or John Le Carré. Incidentally, I still cling to the belief that if this were a Tom Clancy movie, someone would go to Karl Rove's house and shoot him in the head at the end of the pic. It's still not a federal crime to blog that last sentence, is it? Rove's got a small part here, and I agree with my viewing companions: his hair was totally wrong. Rove's hair is flesh colored, not whatever normal colors the actor's was. Also, he wasn't scarfing down eggies. Sloppy direction.
I'm trying not to take this review too seriously, as one can tell, but it is a serious film, very well made, and it's still a sign of our politically dumbed-down times that this received no Oscar nominations. At all! Not even one for best director slash cinematographer. That's right, Peter Hyams, my one-blogger campaign starts today. Spota forever! Well, there's still Steven Soderbergh ahead of you, but still, that field's pretty small. Naomi and Penn are excellent as expected, but I gotta give some props to the dude who played Scooter Libby. I thought maybe it was the creepy guy from The Forgotten who then played Bruce Wayne's dad in Batman Begins, but it's a different guy... Thomas from Fight Club! Nice... For some reason, I thought of the scene from Jaws where the small town mayor makes sure that the sheriff and the shark expert aren't 100% sure about their findings. But I can't make an absolute straight-line comparison between the two, admittedly. One thing I think I can say for sure: the extreme right wing and the extreme left wing in this country have something in common! They BOTH hate the CIA! But only one has actual access, and can actually act on their beliefs. I'll leave it at that.

Good double bill with: Green Zone, Eagle Eye

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Short Reviews - March 2011

Juwanna Mann 2 now on DVD starring Nick Cannon... is that asking so much?

Well, Daniel Benzali seems to have found his proper level in show business: on Genital Hospital... one of those soapers, anyway. Meanwhile, Vanessa Marcil's also on there. Some of you might remember her as the girlfriend with pig tails in The Rock (1996). I dare say she's looking pretty good! But does she deserve to be filed under the awful "Cougar" rubric? I guess it's ultimately the fate of all hot chicks... at least Cameron Diaz seems to be having some fun with it. She is, isn't she? On SNL every coupla months or so?
In serious film news, Lars von Trier's getting in on the Red Riding Hood craze, and is turning what was going to be Dogville Part 2 into a 12 hour miniseries based on Aesop's Fables. He doesn't have a title for it yet.


Sucker Punch - And to think Zack Snyder's going to do the new Superman. Superman's not man enough to handle Suckerpunch!

The Soloist - Great film, great music. I only heard it from the next room. Downey Jr. obviously wasn't enough of a jerk in it.

The Caveman's Valentine - Great film. Never saw it... well, saw some of it... Samuel L.'s too crazy in it, frankly!

The Blind Side - Great film. Never saw it.

Round Midnight (1986) -... is that the one?

Resurrecting the Champ - Hmmm... all these films have SOMETHING in common... but what?

Reign on Me - Now now... Sandler's still the saviour in this one. Just go with it.

WarGames - Obviously a fantasy. A computer hacker with a great body AND a girlfriend? Puh-leeze.

Win Win - Oh boy! Another portrait of dystopic, indie flim small-town America? More Blue Velvet-lite?

Thumbsucker - Alexander Payne-esque

Humble Pie - Not humble enough

Better Off Dead - Father of Humble Pie...

Melancholia - Finally! The two Charlottes are working together: Gainsbourg and Rampling! If only we could get Rashida Jones in there somehow... but why? And for whom?

Your Highness - Remake of Year One. My question is: what would Kenny Powers think? Daniel, are you trying to make Kenny Powers cry? And isn't Jody Hill feeling a little left out as well?

Soul Surfer - Blue Crush 2?

The Conspirator - Well, Spielberg can't be too happy about this one. Stealing his thunder a li'l bit!

Camelot, Spartacus: You Are the Man, Game of Thrones... isn't the market getting flooded with these new original cable series yet?