The tools we use every 10 years

All right, let's get this one over with. This was one that famously, or infamously, got a new-fangled colorization treatment so that it looks like Barton Fink or something. It also features some great violent Stooge moments, like Moe doing the rumba on the side of Curly's face with a cheese grater, and Moe getting hit over the head with a rather thick broom handle. And if I remember correctly, Larry gets grabbed by his curly locks and slapped in the head. Timeless.

ACT ONE

We start innocently enough with a second hand store front. The front of a second hand store, if you will. I won't spoil the Stooges' stunt doubles' grand entrance for you. That's the least I can do. I'll spoil just about everything else, though. For example, the standard play in these kind of deals is that the boys start hitting each other until they end up breaking something. They run into an office building or an apartment building, and before you know it, they've got a new job. In this case, as you can guess from the title, No Census, No Feeling (... is that a play on something?), they end up as Census takers. Moe tells Curly, "We're working for the Census!" Curly asks, "You mean Will Hays?" Follow this link to read more about the infamous Hays Code. Ah, good ol' Wikipedia, Charlie Brown. Will college papers ever be the same? The boys ultimately decide to split up. They can do more damage that way.
Moe gets hit by a flying pitcher... never mind. Larry, ever the lead idiot, ends up back at the original store they trashed. Note to any future Census takers: DON'T be like Larry. Curly finds himself in a classy joint and proceeds to destroy it when no one's around. Ah, a Stooge in love. More destructive than any terrorist.
Addendum: Curly finds himself in the KITCHEN of a classy joint. He's questioning the sexy French maid... Census questions, of course. The maid goes to get permission from the head of the household. Blatant plot device. Census takers are THE ULTIMATE AUTHORITY in these sorts of matters. Yes, it's federal overreach, but even Republicans would agree that it's justified when it comes to Census takers... they used to be, anyway. Hard to know where they stand on anything these days.

Anyway, I think it's time for a funny case of mistaken identity! Moe enters the same kitchen that Curly is in. Because Curly has his back turned and is wearing an official chef's hat, Moe doesn't know who he's talking to. Curly, of course, is all too willing to play the part of the working chef. "Well, you've caught me at a busy time," he tells Moe as he gets ready to grate some cheese into the punch... or maybe an onion or some garlic. It's the Stooges, folks. What do you expect? Cordon bleu?
Curly gives a jolly laugh at 4:01 in the proceedings. (Curly 4:01) I should probably point out that the seeds of a recurring joke get planted at this point. Place of birth? That famous comedy lake of note, Lake Winnipesaukee. Life saved again by Wikipedia! And look! A reference to the very film being reviewed! ...oh, What About Bob. That was something I didn't chttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifare to know...

ACT TWO

Might as well call it an act break. And now... perhaps my favorite Stooge moment of ALL Stooge films is at this point... nah, there's still Dutiful but Dumb to get to, but this would have to be a close second. The sequence where Moe and Larry are but two couches apart, and another case of mistaken identity sets in, as he confuses Larry with a guy with a newspaper over his face. There's the Lake Winnipesaukee question, then the litter of three question and then... Moe's rage takes over. (Moe 4:56) If that film clip isn't in Heaven then I ain't going. That's all there is to it.

Okay, back to the humdrum. Moe gets hit over the head with a rather thick cane that mercifully breaks into two. Larry finally realizes what's going on and asks his soon-to-be trademark question, "Hey, what's the idea?" There's more: "I saw him first! Gimme my four cents!" Moe asks, "Will you take five?" And, of course, like an idiot blessed with a dominant short-term memory, Larry agrees to five. Why Curly and Larry don't wince at the mere mention of the numbers two and five, I have no idea. Apparently it's funny every time.
Cut to the snooty party, overseen by classy dame Symona Boniface. Some would call her the Margaret Dumont of the Stooges, but she can be as nasty as the boys any day of the week... damn! You can find just about anything on the web. And yet, they hang that Manning dude out to dry... Peyton Manning, I think it was. Personally, for me, Symona's finest Stooge moment comes in Half-Wits Holiday, but... hell with it. We'll get into that one soon enough. Moe gets interrupted while trying to break Larry's neck by Symona Boniface. The two newly minted Census takers get to work. Some hilarious number-play ensues, no doubt inspired by the likes of S.J. Perelman or Ben Hecht or George S. Kaufman, one of those jerks. Here's how it starts: Moe asks Symona "How old are you?" Larry asks "What address is this?" Get it? GET IT? I should at least point out that at one point Symona asks Moe, "Well, how do I look?" Moe says, "Oh, lady, you look like a million!" Larry says, "Ah, she can't be that old." The three of them wait for the laughter to subside. Let's see Margaret Dumont pull THAT one off! (On second thought, leave it on. This is a family blog! Drumroll, please...) Moe and Larry eventually get into a bidding war between 43 and 50 over Symona's age. Hmph! 29, my ass. She was 46 when she made this pic! Curly seals the deal with an auctioneer joke, gets hit in the face with one Census notebook. He turns around in anger, then shrugs his shoulders! What is it with him and shrugging his shoulders! He then proceeds to get hit in the back of the head with the other Census notebook. Back to the punch we go... the fruit punch. Curly mistakes alum for powdered sugar and dumps the whole box into the punch. That's right, folks... the alum gag isn't just for Looney Tunes cartoons. The punch is served en masse to the guests from forth the gilded monteith. Let the Alum Games begin!
We're not even on Part Two yet? Good Lourdes. Curly, like the low-class lout he is, tries to drink punch from the ladle. Moe whistles at him, and he stops. Now, here's a tip for all you screenwriters out there. Curly uses the ladleful of the toxic alum home brew and waters a flower that he is fortunately standing close to. We see the flower pucker up and close, to the stock sound effect of a squeaky door closing. Good screenwriting tip for all. The only other example that comes to mind is the skeleton in Clifford... someone has dipped my CPU in pancake batter again! There we go. In Clifford, there's a skeleton wearing a baseball cap in the dinosaur ride at the end. Sorry, forgot... SPOILER ALERT. Now, this may seem out of place, but it serves as a plot point later on. The skeleton ends up in the cart with Clifford and eventually ends up getting eaten by the giant animatronic T-Rex, so it serves as a proxy in lieu of Clifford himself getting eaten. Why, Charles Grodin even says at one point "Maybe I should just let the giant T-Rex eat you! Who KNOWS what sorts of horrors you'll unleash! 'I just made the bestest nuclear bomb in the whole wide world!'" Yes, like Clifford himself, I too am a very special boy. But back to the plot at hand. The flower, in this case, serves more as the canary in a coalmine rather than a proxy. It only foretells the comedy horrors about to be wreaked on the innocent job creators present at the snooty party... ah, what am I saying. Screw those one percenters. Of course, Moe and Larry are also seated at the bridge tables, so they're not free from the wreckage either. At one point, Moe tries to spit out his drink at stage right, then at stage left. For some reason, I seem to recall Jerry Lewis doing that move. Get on that, will you, Robert Osborne?
Eventually, Symona herself begins to see why her drink isn't going over as swimmingly amongst her table guests. Ellinor Vanderveer is seated next to Larry at another table. She appeared briefly in the Marx brothers' classic A Night at the Opera. What a mug!

And finally, we get to part two on YouTube. Symona has a funny moment exactly at 0:08; she appears to have forgotten her line! Let's see Dumont do THAT!

ACT THREE

Okay, I think I've written quite enough about this little alum party. It seems to be the part of the film that gets stretched out so the film's 16 minutes long. Moe eventually puts two and two together, and realizes that Curly's the "start of all this." The party gets completely ruined, and we make a rather abrupt transition to the boys resuming their Census chores. In probably the best case of mistaken noise ever for a Stooge, we hear the sound of a roaring crowd. Moe of course turns to Larry and, even though he can see that Larry's mouth is clearly closed, asks "Why don't you quit yelling?" They hear, then see, stock footage of a crowd at a football game. Yup, that's right... a chance to make money taking the Census at a football game. And it's all for the taking, just for the Stooges. "There must be 100,000 people there! We'll make a fortune!" Time for Curly the Calculator to go to work, which also helps stretch the running time of the film. He has to pull the receipt tape out of his jacket pocket instead of his mouth this time. I just hope the Farrellys do the proper digital CGI homage to this, instead of just championing the cause of giving Jersey Shore's cleavage more exposure. To the football game we go.
The boys arrive at the stadium, and apparently they're not taking their own advice. Rather than try to take the Census of the crowd in attendance, they try to get the Census of the FOOTBALL PLAYERS PLAYING THE GAME. They even dress up as football players to get past the guards. Must be another good screenwriting tip. If they just go into the crowd... well, first of all, they'd have to pay a million extras to make the film! That ain't gonna happen, especially not at Cannery Row... I mean, Columbia. Well, they weren't owned by Sony and Coca Cola at the time. There'd probably be a very different run-in with the authorities if they went into the crowd, but never mind. It is what it is, and interviewing the football players we go. It proves to be difficult, to say the least, especially since THEY'RE PLAYING FOOTBALL! Did I mention that THEY'RE TRYING TO TAKE THE CENSUS OF FOOTBALL PLAYERS WHILE A FOOTBALL GAME IS IN PROGRESS? Just thought I'd mention it.
Okay, I'll spare you the play by play, but here's how it ends up. At some point, the boys abandon their careers as Census takers, and instead sabotage the football game. Curly's running down the field with the ball, with Larry and Moe far behind, dragging an ice cream cart. Larry's pulling the cart, while Moe is chucking ice creams at the players and referees who are all chasing them. We see player after player after referee get hit in the face with a substance that's supposed to look like vanilla ice cream, but it looks more like shaving cream. Curly makes like Forrest Gump, and keeps running after crossing the goal line. He keeps running down the street, and the football players and referees chase them! A sad ending, indeed. But that seems to be how it happens with these Stooge films. For the most part, you can only hope to get a few four-star moments in a two-and-a-half star Stooge flick. Let's split the difference and call it 3.5, then. 'night!

***1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Michael and Shawn Rasmussen

Well, up until recently, the Rasmussens have been the picture of obscurity. They have yet to become epic game-changing icons if the 2010s are their favorite decade, that's for sure. Still, they've been working the studio system, rocking the film festivals, and learning from the screenplay workshops. They only worked on the script of 2005's Long Distance, but did everything on their 2011/2012 directorial debut Dark Feed. They obviously have taken a step backward in terms of casting. Where's the one big name that every film like this needs to stay afloat? Take their work on John Carpenter's The Ward. See? Gotta have one big name... even if it is a faded 70s/80s director icon. Carpenter saw Drag Me to Hell and thought, hey! I got an idea for a movie. A toast to the endless future of future horror mavens the Rasmussen boys!

Cheeky Basterd

Welp, it is official... Brad Bird stumbles! That's what you get for doing a non-Pixar pic. The Guy Ritchie juggernaut jugs on with his latest & greatest: Sherlock Holmes 2. Or is it a reboot? I don't know. The Wild Wild West formula rises again like a phoenix. The explosion-ridden present creeps into the past, never content to stay put. And clearly the trend is away from sequel numbers. Look at all the sequels in the top 10 this week that DON'T have Roman numberals! Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows... Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip-Wrecked... Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol... The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1... Young Adult: Juno 2. No, the Twilight saga is as close as they're going to get. The Roman numeral is a dirty word in Hollywood now. Take Rambo III, for example... the good one!
Still, I can't help but get a little misty-eyed at the loss of rebellion. Jason Lee has finally grown up and done a G picture. Maybe it's a hard G, who knows; a little something for all his fans who grew up watching him in Stealing Harvard, Almost Famous, A Guy Thing... you know, the fun stuff. Meanwhile, the box office is still celebrating Arthur Christmas, while the real Christmas is still a week away. That'll probably get a bump next week, huh? I gotta go.

Triple Indumbnity

This begs the deep, philosophical question: can one make a double pun out of "Double Indemnity"? Or are we restricted to just one pun at a time, like "Triple Indemnity" or just "Double Indumbnity"? And should I have put hyphens around the dumb or quotation marks in order to highlight it? Or in ALL-CAPS? Sorry about yelling, but these are the kinds of detalis that separate the men from the boys... I'm sorry, I forgot. In this day and age, men don't worry about details, especially when it comes to effeminate pursuits like correct spelling and grammar. Anyway, the deadline looms, so it's time to look at the next Stooge film, From Nurse to Worse. Long story short: still not my favourite.

ACT ONE

As with the far superior, post-stroke Curly masterpiece, A Bird in the Head, the boys press the start button and find themselves as paper hangers. They don't know who they're working for, but they soon find out: their friend Jerry. Their friendship with Jerry will be put to the ultimate friendship test. Will their friendship sour when Jerry's profession becomes an issue, and he sells the boys on some insurance? You might recognize Jerry, as he's typically played the heavy in the last couple Stooge films. Here he plays the worst kind of heavy: a friend that tries to use his friends as clients. In this case, it's for some sort of insanity insurance. Apparently someone could get paid $500 a month if they're declared insane by a doctor, but enough about Congress. (tee hee hee!) Curly confuses "banana" with "bonanza". Moe looks like he wants to hit Curly, but for some reason decides not to. Is Moe getting soft in his upper middle age? Could be. Anyway, all the boys have to do is fork over $50 to Jerry, and the gateway to the con is opened.
Now comes the part that stretches the film out to 16 minutes. Curly has a dollar, but it's hidden in a ... sorry, SPOILER ALERT. It's hidden in a purse around his neck. Moe starts to undress Curly to get at the dollar, but Curly thankfully takes over. He's wearing several vests, and it's quite funny when he removes them. So much so, in fact, that he'll do it later on in another film... the one where they invented a flycatcher, and Christine McIntyre mistakes him for a contest winner... ah, skip it. One Stooge film at a time, please. Dang! Curly's arms are kinda buff! When did he have time to work out? Everything but the gut, apparently. The purse is opened, and moths on strings fly out. The dollar's been pretty worked over by the moths, but I guess it'll still do. This was the Depression, after all.
Now it's Larry's turn to fork over some money. The dialogue that Moe and Larry have is probably based on a popular song of the time. Someone else look into that, will ya? Now, I'm no expert, but it seems to me that, after all the time they spent getting one dollar out of Curly, it sure would be funny if it turned out that Larry had fifty dollars on him that were easier to get to. They go the "comedy hair" route instead, as Moe ends up tearing out some of Larry's hair, trying to get money to fall out of it. If I recall correctly, this is the first time they've done that: torn out tufts of Larry's hair. To be honest, I haven't been paying close enough attention so far.
Jerry returns with the insurance paperwork, and the real fun begins. In the Stooge-ocracy, it's decided that Curly will be the one to play insane. He refuses at first. There's a Catch 22 there someplace...

ACT TWO

We end up at the offices of a "Colossal Insurance Examiner." Gee, I wonder if he's got a good comedy name? He's played by Vernon Dent, so we're of course in for a treat. We start in the waiting room of the doctor's office. Curly's pretending to be a dog, but he falls for an elegant, stand-offish lady who's waiting in the waiting area. She appears to be visibly repulsed by Curly. Good casting for the part! Curly goes so far as to dance with the comely lass, when Moe brings him back to the task at hand. The doctor appears and asks "Well, which one is the crazy one?" I told you! Good ol' Vernon never lets you down. Oops! Dinner time... gotta run.

6:04pm - Back! Okay, so the boys head into the examination room. Following specific directions in the script, Larry gives Curly a kick in the ass for good measure. The exam begins. The doc says "Now, let me see... the heart." Curly helpfully says "Two spades!" Now I'm no Freud, but sharp comic timing would seem to imply non-craziness, but never mind. Interesting audio note for you audiophiles out there: Curly sounds like he's underwater at one point! (Curly 5:44) It's the straw that breaks the doc's back and he immediately decides he has to operate on Curly. Damn doctors!! So, needless to say, the plan that Jerry outlined doesn't happen as they thought. The doctor tells Curly that he's going to have to operate on Curly's brain. Curly regains his sanity and the boys flee the office. We hear some vintage Curly noises as they flee. Vernon Dent ends up doing some of his own stunt work out on the street. Whatever they were paying him, it wasn't enough. In another bit of miscasting, the guy who turns and looks, who USUALLY plays a bad guy, shows up here as a cop! Dr. Dent (D. Lerious), now resolute in his determination to crack open Curly's skull, follows the Stooges with a scary fervor. Fortunately, the Stooges make a clean getaway in a strange van. Unfortunately for us, they wind up in a dog catcher's van. To aid in their getaway, the dog catcher and his assistant put a fresh load of dogs into the van WITHOUT LOOKING IN THE VAN AND SEEING THE STOOGES.
And now, for another sequence that stretches out the running time of the film. The three Stooges meet their intellectual match, facing off two dogs in the back of the truck. The boys, catching the dog's fleas, obviously lose. Meanwhile, the dog catchers are listening to the tune they played two Stooge films ago, in Nutty but Nice, but it's cut short by an announcer that sounds an awful lot like Moe! Announcer Moe makes an announcement about the three lunatics on the run from the law AND from their brain surgery appointment. The dog catchers listen in absolute, abject horror. Who wouldn't, frankly?
And so, we come to a fitting end for Act Two. The dog catchers' truck drives into what looks like a garage, but is actually a dog fumigation building. They park the truck inside it, leaving the dogs inside the truck, and proceed to fill the fumigation building with some sort of parasite-killing gas... Wouldn't it be more effective to open the truck in order to more efficiently "gas" the dogs? You might be asking yourself a question like that, but once again, you're not thinking in terms of movies. You're just supposed to think to yourself, holy dog crap! Curly and the boys better get the hell out of that truck! Meanwhile, the Stooges and the dogs have formed some sort of human-dog centipede, each scratching the others' backs in a line. For all you film buffs out there, there's a film that Stooge veteran Jules White directed with just dogs... that must've come in handy for this film. Oh, I don't even know if Jules White directed this one. Someone else look up all that junk for me, okay? Robert Osborne, get on it.

ACT THREE

The boys break out of the truck, and proceed to run around it like idiots. Curly stops and says "This is the longest room ever! C'mon!" They eventually break out, just narrowly missing the dog catchers' nets. They thwart a second attempt by the dog catchers to get them in a taxi. MAGIC! They're unable to outsmart the doctor, Dr. Lerious, however, who rather conveniently happens by in a car of his own. The way he whisks the boys back to the hospital ought to get him banned from his profession for life... then again, it is the Stooges. I should also probably point out that even the simple act of thumbing a ride can set Moe off into one of his trademark rages... but not this time. The plot sprints ahead.
Back at the doctor's office, it looks like the doc's plan to "cerebrally decapitate" Curly is about to come to fruition... but not before Curly manages a little more comic mayhem of his own! He manages to tastefully rip off a nurse's dress, who just as tastefully grabs it back from him. Never content to let a sitting joke lie flat, Moe and Larry resurrect the "MY FRIEND CHARLIE WHO WALKS LIKE THIS" gag. Only in a Stooge film could that work. I sure hope the Farrellys do their rude, tasteless take on it, for all our sakes. The boys are off and running, with the cop on their tail. Time for another Third Act recurring gag. Moe and Larry and the cop keep running into this effete stunt man trying to carry a nice delicate tray of tea and biscuits somewhere. No wonder health care costs are so high. Larry says "No cop can ever catch us!" We'll leave that alone for now. The Stooges worked on shoestring budgets, so they maximized one set of plates and dishes by running into the guy twice with the same first set of broken dishes. The second time this happens, the cop, of all people, says "Oh, what's the use?" You'd think the guy carrying the damn dishes would say that, but he's got dignity and sticks to his guns. Oh, and the boys and the cop get distracted by cute babies, and attempt to fool him by dressing up as a doctor and patient. Meanwhile, back to Curly, who's being dragged to surgery un-anesthetized. In a positively Kafka-esque moment, he manages to slip out of the room, unnoticed. He runs down the hall to another door, goes through it, and... yup! Finds himself back in the room with everyone staring at him as if to say, God, what a jerk! He gives a "N'yaah-aah-aah!" and, accepting his fate just as quickly, shrugs his shoulders and gets back onto the operating table. Moe and Larry enter the room dressed as doctors' assistants. A dude approaches Curly with an ether-soaked rag, and Curly freaks out yet again. A big struggle breaks out, and it turns into a football-field pile-up. And then, more magic happens. I know I wouldn't be able to pull off something like this myself, but they manage to do a li'l ol' swait-and-bitch... I mean, bait-and-switch with Curly and Dr. Lerious... or is it the ol' switcheroo? I tells you, it made me think of Mission: Impossible for some reason. (Opening either this weekend or the next... just Tom Cruise's little way of telling Spielberg to further go f... himself) The boys escape once again. Oh, I should probably point out that one of the other doctors screams "IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE? IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?... Oh, I'm a doctor!" Great stuff. See also that Bugs Bunny cartoon where he goes up against the hairy orange monster for another smart "doctor in the house" joke.

Now, even the Stooges liked to reach for plot grandeur every once in a while. And so, as the end of the film approaches, the boys run their way into the "Morgue" room. Enter the bug-eyed Dudley Dickerson and some other white dude that appears in a lot of these damn Stooge films. The boys pile onto a table in a completely butch manner and cover themselves up with a giant sheet. Enter the two. Dudley Dickerson ends up bugging out his eyes and jumping out the window. Something the Lord Made this is not. Time for more running. And we come to the resolution of the smashed dishes recurring joke... much like the beleaguered glass door replacer of Men in Black... the Stooge film, not the Barry Sonnenfeld blockbuster series.
The boys themselves get tired of all this running around that crazy hospital, so they make their final getaway on a special gurney with a sail. Cut to the footage from a previous Stooge short, but with a special added on ending. They run into Jerry from the beginning of the pic, and manage to knock him into an open vat of either plaster, white paint, or oatmeal... whichever looks better on film. A couple Stooge shorts end this way, but we'll get to those soon enough.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Stephen and Timothy Quay

Man! Bad week to get some blogging done. Sorry, gotta keep it short. Well, we're up to the third pair of identical twin filmmakers. Good Lord! If you've taken an experimental animation class like I have, you've probably heard of the Quays. According to their IMDb bio, they're "best known" for Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer music video... but I'll bet they don't like to think so! Apparently they did the wood and metal sequence, judging from their body of work. Using magnets and metal filings for animation, that's how they made their stamp on the world. Alas, I'm not terribly familiar with their work otherwise, but I think what The Onion said about their Piano Tuner of Earth-Quay-kes probably sums it up best... it wasn't good, basically. But it's still better than total obscurity, right? Like THIS BLOG!!!

Okay, let's try the smile again, only a little more girl-next-door and a little less slutty...

Goodness, shame on me! I must be in some sort of a bad mood... or maybe I'm just trying to get into the next Garry Marshall ensemble cast. Behold the awesome purifying power of the holidays... I'm just not that into it myself. But don't kid yourself, Literati: this screenwriter Katherine Fugate is the real deal. Check out that résumé! And check out this part of the résumé! Art, baby. Hubba bubba, dubba trubba. In yo face, Cezanne. Good lesson for the kids: don't waste water. Anyway, once again the Greatest Generation has to step up and show all us young snots how to Git 'R Done, as Garry Marshall's latest imitation of Short Cuts snags the #1 spot away from the latest Twilight movie. Some have pointed out that it's #1, but a rather anemic #1, which just means that they're just jealous that they didn't get to work with the likes of Michelle Pfeiffer and Hector Elizondo, so they can just go sit in the corner with the rest of the Lame-Stream Media, eating a hearty mixture of worms and boogers.
Meanwhile, the seemingly endless 80s flashback apparently continues with #2's entry, The Sitter, about the worst babysitter in the world. It's supposed to be an homage to all those terrible 80s movies about babysitting... the only one I know of is Adventures in Babysitting, and sure, it's no classic, but it's the best Chris Columbus can do, for God's sake! Why not give him some credit? Chris himself of course pines for the lost 80s; hence his film I Love You, Beth Cooper. Also not his fault: I blame Larry Doyle for that one, and really, how can you disagree with that? Personally, I can't handle this new, thin-faced Jonah Hill. I get confused by The Sitter's poster, featuring a wide-faced Jonah Hill. Does he want to be Chris Penn's heir apparent or not? Why does he want to be like the new, thin Seth Rogen? Clearly not as fun. As for director David Gordon Green, well, I guess he's retained his poet soul that apparently characterized his early 2000 work, at least until Danny McBride started showing up in his movies, and Jody Hill probably couldn't have directed The Sitter any better.
Well, that's all the debuts this week. The 80s flashback continues with The Muppets movie hanging on at #4. The Descendants hangs on to the #7 spot. Immortals is almost gone at #10; I'm surprised it's hung on this long! But ain't that always the Devil's bargain: he gives you immortality but sticks you with Mickey Rourke's 2011 face. Can't hang on to Rourke's 1989 Johnny Handsome face forever, apparently. And, of course, with only 70 million in the bank, there is no joy in Happy Madisonville, mighty Sandler has once again struck out. That won't even cover the catering bill!

Stoogy's Day Out

Welp, I just saw a trailer for the new Three Stooges movie, so I better start with my thoughts about that. The thing that some might find disappointing about the original Stooge shorts is that no Stooge ever gets hit in the nuts, not even by a lobster. This is an oversight that the Farrellys finally rectify in the movie, as well as the fact that the ladies usually wear too many clothes in the original shorts, with the exception of Disorder in the Court, of course; and while this may make me seem prudish, I gotta say that the gal "testifying" about her sexy dance was pretty sexy! I still can't get past Snooki's face, personally, but I'm sure my mind will be changed about that, one way or another. I wasn't terribly impressed with Sean Hayes as Larry, and I didn't get the sense that he was particularly enjoying himself. Curly was pretty good... but the guy doing Moe! He was pretty excellent, if I do say so myself. Oh, he'll have a lot to say on the DVD, I'm sure. He must've been channeling the ol' sugar-bowl top himself, I dare say... FIND THE TRAILERS YOURSELF!

And so, on we go to the next Stooge flick. Let's get it over with. It's called How High is Up? Not to be confused with the Cheech and Chong flick of the same name.

ACT ONE

SPOILER ALERT. What better way to start a Stooge flick than with the boys asleep? Curly runs afoul of a particularly pesky pest while sleeping. We are looking down on the boys from above, and a lamp is hanging over them. We pull back and see that... they are actually asleep under their car! Well, it was the Depression, even though the Stooges in no way represent the angst of said Depression. Things go from bad to worse as a street-washing truck douses the boys with water. They pull down a shade that says "Men at Work" on it. Things go from worse to even more worse as a freak accident lets loose a flood of water from a hydrant. The water ends up washing the boys completely out from under their car, and the three of them float down the street on the back of this strong new urban river. Pedestrians look on in horror and disbelief. They finally come to a stop at an intersection, and fortunately for them, a truck bearing down on them ALSO comes to a stop, even though the street the truck was on looked pretty slick from water. What almost could've been... well, I guess it was just the stunt doubles, and they die in high enough numbers as it is. Moe confuses the honking of the truck's horn for the alarm clock, so he hits Curly in the stomach, and then in the head, ordering him to turn off the alarm clock. Curly doesn't have the normal reaction to getting hit, as he's still plenty tired himself. They eventually realize a cop's watching them, and quickly grab their mattress out of the road and head back to their car. The cop gives them some motivation with his nightstick to move quickly.
Back at their car, Curly makes the usual stupid move: Curly shows Moe an anchor. Now, what do you think Moe's going to do with that anchor? But they try to keep the shtick sort of fresh: Larry ends up being collateral damage. Curly ends up trying to fix their flat tire. A piece of salami from Moe's sandwich ends up serving as the patch for the tire. Needless to say, there are no wasted setups. Moe tells Larry to get the tools that they've been using for the last ten years... just like in that other one... the name of which escapes me at the moment. Pardon My Scotch, that's it! The boys leave to find some work. I probably should've mentioned that in this one they play three self-employed fix-it men. And when you see how they drum up business, you might agree with me that they should be flogged in the town square. After they leave their car, a stray dog goes up to the tire and immediately makes food out of the salami patch on the tire.
The boys return. Moe grabs Curly and says "I thought I told you to fix that puncture." Curly bellows, "I DID!" Good line reading. (Curly 4:08) Larry tries to act like Moe at this point, and quickly gets put in his place by Moe with just a dirty look! Behold the power of Moe.
Now, as I've noted before, in these Stooge shorts that aren't as good as some of the others, there's typically an episode that's used to pad out the length of the film to two reels, or about 16 minutes. In How High is Up?, this episode happens at this point: Curly tries taking off his sweater, and has some trouble doing so. Moe and Larry "help" Curly take off his sweater... and it's probably the saddest thing you'll ever see. I won't describe the whole ordeal, but this will give you an idea of how bad it gets: at one point Moe asks Curly, "Were you wearing a pink tie? No? Well, here's your ear back." At 5:50 and 6:04 in particular, Curly seems especially pissed. I'm going to use this episode as the Act break.

ACT TWO

The boys finally stop grappling with Curly's sweater after destroying it completely and proceed to drum up some "business." They spy a group of lunch boxes and get to work. Now, this is where I part company with the Stooges in this instance. Here's how they drum up business: they put holes in the lunch boxes with their handy board with a nail in it. And even though they rather immediately get caught because of their own stupidity, I still don't like it. Somehow, the filmmakers must've felt the same way, as we move quickly onto the next situation. The boys cut in a job line and get more than they bargained for, finding themselves working as riveters on the 97th floor of a new skyscraper. As with most things, it's about the journey with the Stooges, not the destination. As the boys climb to the 97th floor, Curly has the opportunity to tell Moe, "You laugh when you say that!" And Moe does! It's an unusual moment in Stoogedom... at least, for me. (Moe 1:10).

ACT THREE

Well, for some reason, I hate to spoil the details of what happens on the 97th floor, but it should probably come as no surprise that the parachute Curly's wearing on the way up ends up getting used. Fortunately for them, and unfortunately for the rest of humanity, the parachute opens, they land in their car, and drive off with the parachute blocking their vision. The final shot of the film is epic.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Liam Neeson's "Frantic"

Well, we're perilously close to the end of Act Two of Liam Neeson's long, illustrious career. His Schindler's List days are long behind him, but his A-Team-esque days appear to still be ahead. Check out that poster! Can't airbrush the years away forever, man! To be fair, Unknown's a little more serious than The A-Team, but I've probably given away too much of the plot already. SPOILER ALERT. For me, anyway, this is one of those movies that needs to be seen at least twice; partly because of the headache-inducing quick edits, and partly because of the onion-like plot. Also, partly because of the unseamless digital effects, particularly the aftermath of one explosion. Sometimes it pays to either do the real thing, or construct some sort of analog model, but Joel Silver's still tightening belts on budgets these days, his Road House days far behind him, but perhaps not far enough behind for his taste.
And so, let's dance around the plot enough to qualify this as a movie review. We start off much like Frantic started off, except in Germany in this one. Somehow France's sightseeing is more full of promise, but perhaps that's just bigoted ol' me. Seems ordinary enough: a couple checks in to a fancy-shmancy hotel, guy forgets his suitcase, goes back to the airport alone to get it. Then, something happens along the way... and, long story short, Liam suffers a concussion, slips into a four-day coma, and finds his life totally upside down. This film would be totally different in America, of course... he's able to get out of the German hospital to find he's gone from the frying pan to the fire. He seems to have been replaced by Michael Collins co-star Aidan Quinn (younger and even more blue-eyed!!), and his wife no longer recognizes him. But God bless him, Liam's convinced he's not crazy, and by God, we, the audience, feel his pain.
I will confess that trailers in general no longer do it for me, and the trailer for Unknown didn't impress me all that much. But the movie proper had a certain charm for me. The plot probably went off the rails more than I cared to notice, but there was a certain restraint of tone that I appreciated, even if I can't recall too specifically how it manifested itself. And it looked like it was filmed on genuine FILM, damn it. Not that modern, streaky digital video crap that I hate. But I will confess that the film probably thought it was in the same league as The Day of The Jackal. It's not, but it's probably got a better story than Taken.
And, of course, I should probably give a shout out to those scrumptious leading ladies in the film. I should've remembered Diane Kruger from Inglorious Basterds as Gina, the street-wise cabbie/waitress. If it were Mélanie Laurent, I would've made the connection. I think Diane just might have a fine future as Demi Moore's heir apparent... but I would ultimately advise against that. Several reasons, but mostly that you'd have to go through Demi Moore to get there. Demi's not about to give up just yet! As for January Jones, well, you gotta love the name for starters. I think any girl named after a month already has a leg up in my book. She's already got Mad Men to her credit, and she'll probably do well career-wise anyway, but somehow I see a role in her future playing Michelle Bachmann in an HBO movie. Is that too crazy?

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Mark and Michael Polish

Crikey! How many of these identical twins are there in the movie game? The Pates, the Hughes, these guys... Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers, who else? Hennessy sisters, Meg and Jennifer Tilly... too many to count on one hand. They burst onto the proverbial scene in 1999 with Twin Falls Idaho. A critical favourite and... well, modestly budgeted enough to warrant a future career, the Polish boys brought about their own personal millennial doom and jumped feet first onto that one-film-every-two-years treadmill that most filmmakers eventually find themselves upon. First came Jackpot, the inevitable sophomore slump feature. But it did give Uncle Rico a chance to prepare for the Second Act of his career. And they got to work with 80s icon Daryl Hannah. Then there was Northfork, another chance to work with an 80s icon: James Woods.
Then came The Astronaut Farmer in 2006... and it was time for a three year break. 2009 was a busy year for the boys, and Michael ended up using aliases on Stay Cool and The Smell of Success, but not for the same reason that Stephen King writes under his Bachman alias. The 2010s will find the boys busy once again, and this time they're abandoning their own material for the sake of being at play in the field of icons. Their 2012 feature is called Big Sur, and if you're like me, you might at first think, oh great! Another Henry Miller biopic. Just what we don't need. No, it's based on the work of Jack Kerouac. Unfortunately, they're going to be competing with On the Road, also coming out in 2012 or so. Worse yet, On the Road's got none other than Bella Swan herself in it! That's right, Kristen Stewart has just GOT to show the world that she's more than just this role that's made her an international star. Harry Potter Syndrome all over again. Of course, they didn't exactly flock to The Runaways, did they? Maybe the Polishes will come out all right on this one. But get back to the quirkfest as soon as possible! Us film geeks need more quirk in our lives. We're getting no love from the multiplexes these days.

No debuts this week!

Well, Abel Ferrara's new pic probably debuted in 10 New York theaters, but I'm focusing on the Top 10, baby. Gotta keep current somehow. I forget what pic I was going to use, so why not go with something from Crimes and Misdemeanors? Too many choices. Anyway, the holiday slump benefits Hugo and The Descendants, which rise from 5 to 3 and 10 to 7, respectively. Tower Heist and Puss in Boots are almost gone. Arthur Christmas holds constant at #4; personally, a Merry Christmas is enough for me, folks. I gotta go; people are trying to sleep in the computer room. Stay warm, my friends! If you're thirsty, drink something.

Moe in a giant girl's dress: $16. Moe in a giant girl's dress beating Curly with a balloon: priceless.

Sorry, folks, but I let you down, what can I say? Late for another Stooge deadline, but I can't think of a better one to cut short than Nutty but Nice. Well, maybe a Joe Besser short or two. Sure, there are plenty of good Stooge moments in this one, but I've got a serious problem with the plot structure. And yes, it should matter to you, too. The Stooges play their ACTUAL selves in this one: showbiz entertainer types who get sucked into a kidnapping plot. Rather, they impose themselves upon it. They start off as waiters in a theme restaurant. No offense; I mean, I love Larry as much as the next guy, but I'm hesitant to drink a cup of water that's been in any man's pocket.
Okay, I'm starting to ramble, so I better cut this short like I said I was going to. Something about the kidnapping plot I couldn't stomach in this one. If they play detectives, fine. If they're entertainers that feel a sense of obligation to a little girl they didn't entertain, not so much. And maybe it was something about Moe in drag I found off-putting. But hey! At least he didn't have nail polish on his fingers! A little bonus for my loyal readers: that's my Kryptonite. If I see a man with nail polish on his fingernails, I stop and stare. Well, I stop and stare at most things anyway, but that especially. Oh, and, let me give a brief shout out to one of the future Stooge players: the bad guy whose big move is turning and staring in fear... I'll look up his name later; we'll be seeing a lot more of him as the weeks progress, anyway. Ultimate verdict: not hunting this one down on DVD.

One last note I meant to add but forgot: the Stooges, never one to miss an opportunity to lift a joke from elsewhere, seem to, in my humble opinion, pay a tribute to the whole reincarnation angle of Laurel and Hardy's The Flying Deuces. In their desperate manhunt, Curly stops to examine a horse. "Don't you believe in reincarnation?" he says. Busted!

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Short Reviews - November 2011

Welp, we've got less than a month left in 2011 to go, but I think I can already declare that the Essential Collection of Laurel and Hardy that was recently released is already the DVD collection of the year, if not the decade... well, that's the film reviewer's job, right? To make grand, sweeping declarations like that! Strange; meanwhile, TCM's showing a bunch of silent Laurel and Hardy shorts that I ain't never seen before! Too bad they're not on this collection. Well, I'm not as rabid a L&H fan as the official ones, probably, but even I know what a big deal this is. Stunningly great picture quality. Foreign language versions. Guest appearances in other shorts that no one would care about otherwise. We'll never see the likes of Laurel and Hardy again, that's for sure... okay, maybe not. (Side note: Oliver "Fattius" Hardy? Oh, that's not nice. Norville, damn it! Norville.)



Big Trouble - Perhaps Heavy D's greatest role... it's the only one I've seen, so I don't know for sure. Godspeed, Heavy D... Godspeed.

Wild Wild West - Barry Sonnenfeld, call your mother...

Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon - Bill O'Reilly plays himself in it. It's not kosher.

The Last Detail - PONICSAN!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nero Fiddled - I guess Decameron skedaddled... see, it was originally called The Bop Decameron, whatever that means.

Vanilla Sky - Decameron Crowe!

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Experimenting with new nose technology, I see...

Flight - Zemeckis! You've come back to reality!

The Notebook - The role that got away from Jessica Biel

The A-Team - The role she regrets getting...

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry - Ditto...

Next - ...well, it was a fun shoot, anyway. She and Tamahori kept having fashion wars in between takes!

The Chocolate War - Oh, Obie...

Be Your Age - Exactly. I guess most people these days only watch the first half, though.

The Freckled Fish - Solomon Soopmeat? Good comedy name...

Galaxy Quest - ... is it one word or two? Anyway, someone give Enrio Colantoni an Emmy for his performance on Person of Interest, even though it's really for Mathesar... ah, screw it. He's overexposed as it is, as I'm just now seeing from his IMDb C.V.

Homeland Security - Exactly. Enrico the Chef... oh, puh-leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze... Your best work, Gallo!

Cold Souls - Good double bill with American Splendor

Crossroads - Hah, hah, ha-hah hah!!! Anson Mount's a dork!!

College Road Trip - Martin Lawrence in a G-rated movie? No. Not possible. Not Cee. Not Hurbie. Not Boog. Not Marcus Burnett. Not Miles Logan. See what I mean?

Cider House Rules - Really? Heavy D was in that?

Jack and Jill - Another Yahoo! movie list... Drag Gone Bad.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - Not even out yet!!! (11/12)

Madea Goes to Jail - My question about the list, Yahoo!... only one Madea movie?

Hairspray - The remake, not the original. I guess the original's okay... must be the only PG-rated John Waters movie

Norbit - Fake boob technology's come a long way since Back to the Future Part II.

White Chicks - Hey look! It's the Hiltons!

Ed Wood - Movie maker gone bad, not "Drag Gone Bad"

Mrs. Doubtfire - No doubt

Pink Flamingos - Only one out of many X-rated John Waters pics

Tootsie - I think it was supposed to be bad... or at least, convincing enough for a soap opera. But it's on the list because Larry Gelbart wasn't happy with it

The World According to Garp - Ah HAH! Robin Williams makes the list twice!

Dressed to Kill - Damn! Spoiled the surprise. Well, he still looks better than Angie Dickinson... oh snap!

To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar - It's FOO, not FU!!

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - What can you say? They were ahead of their time with the whole "cougar" craze. And they look better, too!

The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Again, I think it was supposed to be bad. What would the Drag Gone Good list look like? Would there be anything on it?

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life - Honorable mention, I suppose, as their whole series was simply RIDDLED with guys in drag. TV's chopped liver, apparently

Some Like It Hot - Again, to me, this doesn't belong on the list. Or are people tired of this movie yet? It topped the AFI comedy list!

Girlfriend Experience - CHANGE THE TITLE! CHANGE THE TITLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Girlfriend Experience - Once again, the porn world and the public education world cross... would've been a bigger deal a few decades ago.

Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself - Yes you can, Tyler... yes you can. Incidentally, this can be said about all his movies.

Clash of the Titans - Rated B for breast feeding... Titans is right!

The Seven-Ups - What a ripoff! No 7-Up in it at all! No Mr. Pibb, no Coca-Cola, no Shasta... I feel cheated. Someone get me an Adam Sandler DVD. I need my product placement fix...

Kazaam - Ahhh... that's better.

Dodsworth - There's gotta be some way that either Sandra Bullock or Jennifer Aniston can remake this picture and make Fran the hero.

Midnight in Paris - Finally! Woody Allen punches Ernest Hemingway right back!

Manhattan - In other words, what Harlene Rosen or Louise Lasser has to say is irrelevant


And finally, to put my obsession with Madonna's Material Girl music video to rest. God bless you, YouTube and Wikipedia! Keith Carradine? What was he thinking?!! Well, Madonna was kind of a big deal at the time. Her star has turned into a white dwarf since, needles to say.



Wikipedia's got too much... this is getting out of hand.

Auteur Watch - Jesse and Evgenia Peretz

Lemme tell ya something... it's getting cutthroat out there in the world of showbiz! Well, probably the world, in general. But showbiz in particular, even a child of semi-privilege is having a hard go of it these days! You know, the kind that Noah Baumbach makes films about, mostly The Squid and the Whale, where life is very long and there's time ONLY for fussing and fighting, my friends. Take Jesse Peretz, for example. His resumé's not exactly full to bursting, like David Gordon Green's or Morgan J. Freeman's was in the late 90s, which of course means he's living life to the fullest, like Terry Gilliam hopefully is. But still, as he, along with the rest of the world, emerged into the post 9-11 world, it was hard to make an impression in the full-to-bursting filmmaking community. I mean, if you can't get noticed with Zach Braff in your movie, well... guess who's taking the fall for that?
And so, Jesse needed a partner. Enter Sister Evgenia of the Virginal Movie Career... Hey, don't laugh! Can't argue with resluts! Results, rather. Just as the Farrelly brothers got on the Jim Carrey train at the right time, so to did the Peretz siblings ride the Paul Rudd Concorde to glory with 2011's Our Idiot Brother: a smarter, not-as-edgy Judd Apatow-esque production. At least, Apatow's name isn't in the full credits list on IMDb. Not even under a "Special thanks" category! There's nothing new yet on the Peretz slate, but don't worry. They'll be busier than Jody Hill in no time flat. They'll have to subcontract their work, they'll be so busy! So keep an eye on these two, as they'll be household names around this time next year. In fact, you won't have to keep an eye on them at all! You'll be sick of them by then. But they'll win you back, no question about it.

Happy Vampsgiving!

Oh, right! The picture... Anyway, big surprise. The latest and greatest Twilight entry is #1 again. On the other hand, George Clooney's latest non-crowd-pleaser is #10 again! Not going to make my one-week wonder list! Yay! But back to Twilight. See, they COULD have released it near Halloween, but wisely chose close to Thanksgiving instead. Maybe next year they'll pick Christmas. Vampires aren't just for Halloween anymore, you see... nah, still the week before Xsgiving, according to the notoriously unreliable IMDb, my go-to source for movie information. Oh, is Jacob going to do like Puss in Boots and get his own spinoff series? Might as well! But really, who wants to read about wolfmen's mid-life crises? Totally not sexy.
In second-place news, The Muppets reboot takes 2nd place, if not Manhattan. Yes, despite the hip critics protestations, Disney still knows how to make the box office its b'eatch when it wants to, as long as they spend more on advertising than they expect to earn on opening weekend. Meanwhile, the latest lamprey attaches itself to Christmas: this time, a non-tipsy Arthur. Lousy Brits. And a PG movie, no less! The war on Christmas begins, with the adults taking Christmas joy away from our tiny tots. A Silent Night, Deadly Night reboot is surely next. If he played his cards right, what's-his-face could've had that plum role. Arthur, son of Santa... time for the next generation to tentatively take the reindeer reins of power... JESSE EISENBERG! That's it. Sorry, Jesse, but I guess you're not a crucial part of my personal neural net. Let's face it: James McAvoy's no spring chicken anymore! Jesse would've been the perfect post-modern hipster wise-cracking son of Santa. Try again next year when the sequel gets released.
And finally, Martin Scorsese, the patron saint of violent, R-rated movies, finally felt the need to make a film his young relatives could watch. Universally loved by the critics, all-but-shunned by the movie-attending public, Hugo comes in fifth with only 11 million dollars. Well, that's half way there! Only 159 million more to go, and you've covered the film's budget... as for advertising, distribution costs, etc., well... I'm sure the studio thinks of it as a long-term investment. After all, this is not Transformers we're talking about! Might as well see what Michael Bay's up to. Nothing new on the director part yet, but... The Hauntrepreneur? I gotta go.

Movie Review: The Maiden Heist

Whatever The Onion says about it, that's what I say.

Good double bill with: what else? The Cooler!

**1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

N'yuks and bolts

Once again, we stumble across a Stooge short that needs no introduction. Without a doubt, A Plumbing We Will Go is one of the (Stooge) greats, and deserves its place amongst the top 10 or 20 Stooge shorts ever made... then again, there is that whole Dudley Dickerson subplot, which I find to be unnecessary. Oh, so you're saying you prefer NO black people to a bug-eyed black person? No, I'm not saying that. Not too many dignified black roles in these Stooge shorts... then again, not too many dignified roles of ANY ethnic stripe in a Stooge film exist. Sure, the rich types start out dignified, but live to see their stations quickly eroded, usually right out from under their feet. Still, there's the whole plumbing sub-plot.  Let's focus on that, shall we?

ACT ONE

It seems to have been a while, but once again the Stooges find themselves in the loving arms of the wrong side of the law where they squarely belong. Of course, as an amateur lawyer, even I have to object to the prosecution's argument. "Evasive attitude?" Where is that in the Constitution, exactly? If we started locking people up for "evasive" attitudes, there'd be no one left in the world! Then again... well, for brevity's sake, let's leave aside the fact that the three of them are on the witness stand together as one unit, with Curly and Larry sitting in Moe's lap. Kinda gay? Or very, very gay? Personally, I think Brett Ratner should apologize to GLAAD not for his comments, but for Rush Hours 2 and 3 at the very least. Probably Red Dragon, too. Anyway, back to the trial. The Stooges are on trial for looting a chicken coop that belonged to a woman with a good comedy name. The judge throws the case out, leaving aside the fact that Curly's hat is apparently full of chicken down. Curly lets out a ripe n'yuk n'yuk, then a nyaah-nyaah as he attempts to pluck all the feathers out of the air. Gossip, indeed. Bud Jamison gives Curly a good, swift kick in the ass, and they're off to get locked up a second time. Bud immediately spys the boys trying to fish a fish out of a display bowl in front of a pet store called "The Doggy Pet Shop." Moe gives Curly the ol' Oliver Hardy treatment. You know how Oliver Hardy's always slapping Stan Laurel's hand for one offence or another? Anyway, Curly runs afoul of a mannequin dressed as a cop, and he goes to town on it. Let the slippery slope begin! Guess what happens next... no, go ahead! Guess! That's right, Bud Jamison steps in front of the mannequin, but he manages to hit Curly first. Let the chase begin. Meanwhile, that dirty ol' bastard Monte Collins is performing a magic show that the Stooges get tangled up in. The cop sees them in a magic box and storms the stage. The Stooges eventually get away in a plumber's truck. Trucks were easier to steal back then, apparently. And car accidents were more common. The cop grabs on to ... you know, a thing with wheels on it that gets towed behind the truck? Larry tells Curly to cut it loose, and Bud Jamison ends up in a vat of watered-down plaster, or something. As good a place for an act break as any.

ACT TWO

The boys stop in front of a house. Larry and Curly fall out of the back of the truck. "Why don't ya call your stops?" asks Curly. A butler comes out and admonishes the Stooges for being late. (He thinks they're plumbers, you see... well, he's about to go to the School of Hard N'Yuks!) The way I figure it, it's time to apply my "Jerk Mandate" rule. Because the butler acted like a jerk, it's okay if the boys trash the house. Another good example of the "Jerk Mandate:" the demise of Abigail Craven in the first Addams Family movie. Because she acted like a jerk to Fester, she clearly deserves what happens to her... I forget what happened to her. Anyway, back to the Stooges. They see Police Officer Bud Jamison riding after them on a bicycle, grab a bunch of plumbing equipment, and storm the house. They perhaps should've taken one turn in the road while making their escape.
The butler informs them that there's a leak in the basement. Betraying their extreme ignorance, Larry asks "Where's the basement?" Curly compounds the ignorance, and exclaims "Upstairs!" Oscar for Larry, anyone? Nah, his Oscar moment comes a little later on. They eventually end up DOWNSTAIRS in the basement. Moe takes a rather nasty tumble in the excitement but gets right back up again. (Moe 5:08) Professor Moe, at 5:17, for once, has questions of his own: "What do you know about plumbing?" So much to learn. Larry's Oscar moment happens at 5:24 when he says "How can you fix it while it's leaking?" Curly and Moe get sidetracked in a competition to see who can nod their head the most, after which Curly is off to wreak his own havoc. Moe and Larry proceed to destroy the basement, but they do it in small steps. Another Oscar moment for Larry at 6:46. (Larry 6:46) Curly has a moment where he f... messes with the censors at the Hays Commission as he interrupts the shower of some snooty dude. Maybe he's the token Brit, who knows. After the guy wrapped in a towel leaves, Curly proceeds to destroy the upstairs bathroom. They seem to have dubbed in Curly's voice at 7:42. God stops the water once to get a laugh, but after that, Lord here comes the flood. Curly is powerless to stop the water coming from the knob, and the hole's a little bigger than one finger, and the water's more powerful than Curly's hat.
Back to Moe and Larry. Larry suddenly gets inspired to wander off and cause his own damage. But before he goes, he manages to hurt Moe in the process. Moe gets hit twice, then Larry, in a fit of panic, gets hit twice, but I think Moe got the worse end of the deal. Maybe Larry's Oscar moment is at 8:38, who knows. I'm obviously not the one to make the final decision about something this important. (Larry 8:38) Meanwhile, Curly continues on his plumber's journey. It pays off later on, trust me.
And now... enter Dudley Dickerson, the token bug-eyed black dude. He earns his stuntman credentials on this one, as he ends up falling on his ass about twenty times too many for my taste. Oh, I just hope I didn't laugh too much at it when I was a kid. If so, I can never run for president.

ACT THREE

I don't know where to break between acts two and three, but perhaps Curly's final plumbing job is a good place to start. Curly managed to get ahead of the water for a few seconds, but alas, his labyrinthine piping could only slow down the water so much. Curly's Oscar moment surely happens at 0:27. (Curly 0:27) Followed immediately by Larry's Oscar moment, when he puts that snooty butler in his place: first in words, and then, with a FACE FULL OF DIRT!! Heh heh heh... actually, it looked more like a square piece of foam... hopefully, it was. Meanwhile, Curly finds his way back to Moe... the hard way. Curly ruins Moe's plumbing work, and Curly has another Oscar moment at 1:28 by screaming "I resent that!" Good line reading. One for the books. They dub his voice again at 1:39, I'm afraid. Curly goes to get another piece of pipe, like he said, and then proceeds to destroy the house's electrical system. Fortunately, he's dried out quickly, after being soaked to the bone, so he'll stave off electrical shock for a while. More capering with Dudley Dickerson. Needles to say, the science of comedy is stretched to its limits in this one, but how can you not be won over by the genial nature of this film? It just wants to entertain! Something like that. Oh yeah, and Larry emerges from the ground like some kind of bald-headed mole. I think they used that clip again in a Shemp film. Most expensive shot of the whole movie right there.

Maybe this is where Act Three begins, even though there's not much left. The Stooges take an early swipe at television, a medium they would eventually conquer. But for now, it provides a good laugh. This is where the comedy dividends pay off with the initial investments made. Oh, the indignities that Bess Flowers has to suffer. It only gets worse, especially after Curly emerges from the basement. Curly patches up the hole he made in the upstairs bathroom with a throw rug. And, of course, as often happens in films like this, we find out that everything's connected. Guess who's house they trashed? Well, I just hate to spoil it, but needles to say, the Stooges never give up hope. The three of them are all in the basement now. Larry tunneled his way back, apparently. Moe tells Curly to "go up and collect for the job." Is he serious? Apparently, deadly serious. When the owner of the house ends up in the basement the same way Curly did a few scenes ago, Moe is rightly enraged. Why, look at the damage they caused by falling into the basement! The magic act also makes a return appearance, and the hole that Larry dug comes in handy, but it also suffers from a plot device: I thought he dug only one hole! Also, the special effect of the final shot: I wonder how it played on the big screen back in the day? Probably not as well as it should have, but sometimes you have to take those visual risks for the sake of the big picture.

And so, is A Plumbing We Will Go better than the sum of its parts? Arguably, not all of the parts, but you gotta admire the effort of the good parts. I understand James Cameron used this film as inspiration for Titanic!... okay, maybe not.

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Josh and Jonas Pate

Apparently they're twins, which makes sense from the picture... sort of. They've still got their whole professional lives ahead of them, but there's probably enough to apply my handy decade theory. If pressed, the brothers would probably say that the 90s were their favourite decade. Just starting out, lean and hungry, rubbing elbows with the greats, and getting the best cast of 1992 together for their debut feature, The Grave. I'm sure Maxim magazine would say that it's Gabrielle Anwar's greatest role of all time, and they'd wonder aloud why she can't get more roles like that. Then came 1997's Deceiver. What is it about having Ellen Burstyn in your movie? Or Faye Dunaway? It's just not the 70s anymore, guys. But it'd be the last time a decade was so clearly defined by the tacky, tacky clothes.
And so, the Pates survived their cinematic adolescence, trying in vain to be the next Coen brothers, deciding against it, and going full bore into TV production in the 2000s and beyond. But they're not going to make the same mistakes that, say, Rod Daniel made. No, their superhero/supernatural projects will be a cut above the average dreck. And judging from their respective resumés, it appears that Jonas is the alpha brother. Harder working, more stuff on the plate. Why, Josh doesn't even get credit on Shrink! For shame. Hate to see that. I dunno; maybe I'm naive, but what I saw of Shrink I liked. I know the Onion didn't care for it, but frankly, they're just too damn picky. If Tina Fey's not in it, it doesn't get an A. Another complaint was that the germophobe guy in Shrink wasn't consistent. The germophobe guy would wash his hands all the time, sure, and yet he slept with a germ-friendly prostitute, if I remember correctly. Well, that's the thing about love. When the little head does the thinking, all bets and rules are off. The most primordial biological impulses will not be denied. Ever. Case in point: The Grave!
As always, the 2010s are looking to be the bestest decade ever, because in the midst of all the dreck they're producing for TV, I smell a pet project! Something called Way Down South. Way Down South, resting in my arms, I've been waiting all night long just to talk to you. Way down South, do you have to leave so soon... sorry, got sidetracked again. These blank.gifs are rearing their ugly heads again. The Pates were born in North Carolina, which I guess is technically part of the South. Same reason Brad Pitt's character in Inglorious Basturds was from Quentin Tarantino's home town or state. There's just something about that damn South. Must be a yin yang thing. Us snooty Yankees are either the yin or the yang to the South's deliberately unsnooty yang or yin. Emmy Rossum, gotta like her! Fuhgettaboutit...

Hey, get a room, guys!

Oh, right... I shoulda figured that the latest installment of Twilight would make the box office its bitch. Typical. Well, it's for the kids. The kids are all right, when it comes to the movies. I guess George Clooney's just not the draw he once was, as with the Ocean's Eleven movies. No one wants to see him in About Schmidt, except maybe me, but I can't get to the theatre these days. Gotta work on that. The other debut this week is Happy Feet 2, another sequel. Lotta sequels on the chart this week! Harold & Kumar 3, Puss in Boots (Shrek 4.5?), Jack and Jill... I think of it as a sequel. I think of it as Billy Madison XII... something like that. Close enough.

Rock, Paper, ... Avalanche?

Time for this week's Stooge film: Rockin' Thru the Rockies. It's a rather nondescript one, if I do say so myself. Not in my regular Stooge short regimen, or pantheon. The problem could be the presence of too many Stooge staples: the swinging branch, the running to dinner, the running afoul of a wild beast during sleep... let's take an in-depth look, shall we?

ACT ONE

You do have to give them credit. At least the setting seems unique. It's a period piece, such as they are. The Stooges were on a tight budget as it was, but fortunately the props they work with are pretty ancient as it is. The Stooges play guides taking a troupe of three lovely ladies and their battle ax manager across the country to an engagement in San Francisco. It's apparently the post-Civil War period and they've got a covered wagon, so it's basically the blind leading the blind. Now, like any seasoned film star, the Stooges believe in a good segué as much as the next guy. Here's the segué we get to introduce the Stooges: the battle ax says "Where are those three SUN BAKED HAMS?" Cue the swinging branch gag! The third one always does the trick. To further set the setting, Moe says "Quiet! You want the Indians to hear us?" As always, Curly provides the counter-intuitive genius: "Yeah! I'm sick and tired of looking for Indians! Let them look for us for a change!" Ever the parrot, Larry repeats this line, which Moe finds to be the bigger insult, apparently. Thank God the battle ax rings the dinner triangle. She's strong enough to knock their three heads together, and she does, further threatening to shoot them if they don't get them to San Francisco in time. Tough crowd! Moe does the lousiest job of sweet-talking ever, and spares their miserable lives for 13 more minutes, long enough to indulge their love of food. To the corn beef we go! Right after Curly almost kisses Moe on the mouth.
The boys... well, Curly, runs afoul of a stubborn can of corn beef. Curly tries opening the can with an axe... gee, I wonder what's going to happen. Moe and Larry go double-team on Curly's ass: Moe with a fist to the stomach, which causes Curly to bow forward, and Larry with a fist to the head, which causes Curly to stand up straight again. Oh, dude! So harsh. You may never see this move again! But circumstances were dire, and you'd think Curly would get the message. No such luck, and he ends up causing further damage. Long story short, Curly ends up shooting Moe in the foot and scaring the horses. After the ruckus dies down, one of the goils says to Curly, "Well, if there ARE any Indians they certainly know where to find us!" Curly doesn't quite espouse his logic on that particular topic, but he does make another desperate attempt at an actual joke. Larry gets a big line at this point: "Indians, Indians. Hah hah! Why, there isn't any of 'em for miles around!" I understand that this part was submitted to the Oscar committee. Alas, they didn't think Larry was Oscar-worthy that year; Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story would just have to do. Politics. But this might as well be the unsubtle transition between Acts One and Two. Judgment call on my part, I know.

ACT TWO
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We meet the Indians. Since they're movie Indians, we don't have to feel as bad... something like that. Well, they are comedy Indians, of the "Escrow" tribe... get it? New Stooge character actor Dick Curtis will just have to do as the chief Indian. He says "How," of course. Curly says "How do you do," giving us a glimpse into future post-stroke Curly line readings. The eviction notice is given: the Stooges and company have two sundowns to get going. Far too lenient. The Indians leave, but the seeds of future plot developments are planted: one of the Indians fancies the white chicks. Dick Curtis makes an interesting grunting noise , and says "You keep-um mind on business. Make-um whoopee later... not bad!" They're only human!
The "Indians" leave and the boys return to the business at hand: going from the frying pan to the fire. Curly ends up firing the rifle again, and the horses get so scared, they loose themselves from their connection to the wagon and run off. Curly ends up killing three ducks. Everyone else exclaims "Look at the horses!" Curly, the lone voice of insanity, says "Look at the ducks!" Moe and Larry say "Never mind the ducks." Frankly, it's sloppy direction. They should've had Curly say it three times, and on the third time, have EVERYONE say in unison "NEVER MIND THE DUCKS!!!" Hopefully, the Farrellys won't make the same mistake with their crappy reboot.
The battle ax tells the boys that the only thing keeping her from shooting them is that she's out of bullets. Curly helpfully says "Oh, I've got plenty of bullets! I'll be glad to lend you some!" Curly eventually comes to his senses and takes his bullets back.
Using a blatant plot device, the Stooges manage to build half-decent shelter for the night using scenery from the girls' show. Curly also manages to ruin two guitars, using them as "snow shoes." We don't see him actually wrecking the guitars, though. I guess technically the Act Two break should've been when night fell and the boys were asleep. As we find out, Curly also barks in his sleep! What would Freud say about that?
Anyway, how to get a wild animal into the plot? Genius, that's how. Curly is given a bear hyde as a blanket, but he needs a mattress as well, so he goes out into the snowy night to get one out of the wagon. He leaves the door to the temporary shelter open. Cue the REAL bear. Long story short, this leads to a variation on ANOTHER classic Stooge theme where the boys think their fellow Stooges can make animal noises. Curly reaches for the real bear, thinking it's the bear hyde. The bear growls like the MGM lion. Curly yells "Hey! Quit snoring so loud!" Long, long story short: Curly scares off the bear by barking. Brother bear scared off by evil, insane white man, in other words. Finally! I'm putting my Native American college courses to work. Curly's stunt double leaps in between Moe's stunt double and Larry's stunt double and promptly goes to bed. Fade to black.
Now, this should probably be the act break between Acts Two and Three here, but I'm going to wait until the ice fishing gag for that.
The next morning. Moe and Larry find that Curly has hogged all the blankets sometime in the middle of the night. Retribution is swift and in the stomach. Curly notices the ceiling is pregnant with many snow babies. Moe tells Curly to brace it up with a pole, but what good would it be if we didn't have the Stooges covered in snow? I'm assuming it's fake snow made out of asbestos. Well, it was lighter and looked better on film. Also, real snow might be too heavy. Curly makes a good Woo-Woo noise here. (Curly 1:31) Whew! Haven't gotten a blank.gif message yet. Curly bad-libs again, saying "I'm sorry, Moe! A lizard! I mean, a blizzard!" Long story short, the Stooges rudely wake up the girls, and shock them with the threat of changing clothes. Such gutter behaviour, indeed. Darwin must be spinning in his grave. The Stooge love affair must be at an end, or at least at its first seven year itch. Case in point: Curly beans Moe with the non-blade end of an axe, and when he comes to, he ends up telling Curly "I hate you!" Sounds like the proper Act break to me.

ACT THREE

Here's another good screenwriting tip... maybe not. Still, the Stooges found it necessary to justify a close-up shot. Larry's pumping water into a bucket, but because it's cold, pumps ice cubes instead. Moe sees this in the wide shot, and looks rightfully shocked and disgusted. We then get a close-up of the pump coughing up a whole bunch of ice cubes. Oh, but it doesn't end there, my friends. Moe tells Larry, "Look! Gold!" And of course, like an idiot, Larry bends over and looks for gold, and Moe proceeds to dump all the ice cubes into Larry's pants. The battle ax is not amused by any of this, of course, and orders the boys to get breakfast for everyone. The Stooges love food more than gold and proceed to break into the canned corned beef once again... gone! All the food's gone! Larry says, "Bears! They've eaten it up! Nothing left!" Maybe that was the Oscar part, I don't know. In his delirium, Curly gets the idea to rig a sail to the wagon, in the hopes that it will act like a boat on land. The battle ax, weary from battle, agrees to try it. I almost hate to hear that level of resignation. Moe starts barking orders and generally gets caught up in the moment. For once, Curly brings HIM back to earth! (Curly 4:09) I dare say the whole film's worth it for just that moment. Sorry, but I don't know how to make a hyperlink to a YouTube video go to the spot I want it to. Work on that, Google nerds!
Next scene: the sail's built, and people keep saying "Well, all right!" Finally, we get that unison we should've had earlier. Now, some might mistake Moe's line at this point for love of country, but I think of it more as just the latest in a lifetime of Curly rebuttals. Here's the scenario: Curly says "Hey! Maybe we'll be like Columbus and discover a new country!" Moe says, "This country's good enough for us." Well, you gotta feel national pride some of the time. Larry keeps the madness going by saying he'd like to "discover" something to eat. Time for the big fishing scene. Now, you probably know what's going to happen, but there's at least one surprise on the way. Oh yeah, and at 4:50, Moe says "A blue... who's talkin' to you?" Gotta like that. But the surprise is at 5:34 here. The not-so-surprising part, well... let me put it this way: Curly ends up saying "Hey! This fish looks like Moe." You'll see a play on this theme later on in "A Bird in the Head," and it's done a little better there, in my humble opinion. Or maybe I'm just saying that because that's the second Stooge short I ever saw.
Now, since they squandered so much time already, there's 90 seconds left in this picture. You can do the math on this one: is that enough time to squeeze in a kidnapping subplot? I didn't think so either. But the Indians were decent enough to leave a note... in English no less! Apparently they refer to the battle ax as "Hatchet Face." They kidnapped the three girls, and apparently didn't do a very good job of it, because we hear screams as soon as the note's read. All in all, it's handled far too efficiently, but there's just enough time for Moe to suffer another massive head injury as the wind picks up, and carries the besailed wagon away to God knows where.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Charles and James Parrott

Am I the only one who cares about these two? Maybe, except for those Sons of the Desert types. They might know who these two are. They worked with Hal Roach a lot, probably with Laurel and Hardy a lot. I tell ya, those non-Laurel and Hardy assignments were just the pits. Absolute pits. Working with animals, and sub-par Laurel and Hardy humans. Long time between prestige gigs. Oh, but that's, like, old! At least three generations ago! Get with the living, dude! I can't, I just can't. That's why I'm a film fan! That's all the life I can handle!

Tarred, feathered, and singed by the box office

Slight pun on the director of Immortals. But for me that's not the real story of the box office this week. The latest manly Lord of the Rings clone isn't news. That's what people don't like about Lord of the Rings: both chicks and dudes can find characters to relate to when watching it. That's no good. 300, Thor, Watchmen, Immortals... all for the dudes. As it probably should be. And probably how the new Superman movie will be. No, the real story this week is guys in drag. There was a Yahoo! list last week called "Drag Gone Bad" which probably should've just been called "Movies with guys in drag in them." See, because the "Drag Gone Bad" list included Norbit and Some Like It Hot: two movies that could only be together on a general list like this. I personally don't consider Some Like It Hot to be Billy Wilder's best work, but it's probably up there for most, if only because of Marilyn Monroe. If the list wasn't just for films, they'd include these Miller Beer commercials with these guys dressed up as ladies to take advantage of Ladies Night at their local bar. And how about Sorority Boys? Why didn't THAT make the list? I guess it wasn't bad enough to make the list, or funny enough. One of the two. Anyway, in the picture I have there, there's J. Edgar under the Adam Sandler pic... ANYONE ELSE SEE THE IRONY OF THAT? Or is J. Edgar Hoover's personal public file now been purged of any and all eccentricity? Simpsons time, gotta go......................

.....oh, that was not a good Simpsons. Marge, Bart and Lisa blogging... I guess it was inevitable. They're changing Homer too much. He can make stuff now! There's stuff he doesn't eat now! Then again, I think it's the principle of it. Homer will eat anything, but it has to be his idea. Anyway, I think I covered all the debuts: Immorals, J. Edgar and Jack and Jill. Let me just say that Clint Eastwood got DiCaprio away from Scorsese somehow. Would Scorsese have made a better J. Edgar biopic? Hard to say. The Onion wasn't crazy about it, but Ebert was. Oh, those two are always disagreeing. I gotta go. Tax time!... no, wait, health care recertification time. I just don't know what's worse.

As Nazty as they wanna be

You know, there's a whole other version of Wikipedia out there for right-wingers. I'm not going to give the name of it, but I did browse it a little bit. It certainly lived up to its name, if nothing else. I browsed about three different topics, and then the following question came up: "Should the United States have entered World War II?" They've expanded since then to include World War I, and probably the Civil War, for all I know. Now, I already know I'm not smart enough to debate, or even ponder, such deep, philosophical questions, but from a movie standpoint I can answer that easily: How about Raiders of the Lost Ark? And the third one? Schindler's List? Saving Private Ryan? Hope and Glory? Those are my reasons we needed to enter World War II.
Of course, this was before Obama was elected president when I saw that web page. I'm sure the argument now is that, well, Hawaii's not really a state anymore. The continental U.S. wasn't attacked, Pearl Harbor was! Besides, if Germany did win the war, Fatherland would be a biography and not just perverse historical fiction TRYING to be a legitimate biography!
And, of course, all the great comedians of the time had this terrible anti-German bias, making fun of Hitler and what not. Jack Benny with his To Be or Not to Be, Chaplin with The Great Dictator, and the Stooges with this week's entry, You Nazty Spy! (Damn... I've fallen behind just a smidge)

ACT ONE

Even the Stooges knew that Hitler had help. A Hitler cannot exist in a vacuum, and the Catholic church and some industrialists were champions of the chancellor's cause. And so, we begin with some bored job creators sitting around (in the fictional country of Moronica) deciding to oust the king and replace him with a dictator. The Stooges are "paperhangers" doing some work in the house of the industrialists. There's no time for them to destroy the place, as the gears of the plot turn quickly in this one. A lot to cram into 16 minutes this time. Moe (Moe Hailstone here) transforms himself into Hitler before our very eyes, also with the help of a prop moustache and messed-up hair. It's not long before Moe's giving a speech before a crowd, with Curly decked out as Mussolini, I'm assuming, and Larry as... Goebbels? I forget his comedy name already.

ACT TWO

Sorry, folks, but I gotta keep this one short. But I promise I'll spend more time on I'll Never Heil Again. All seems to be going well for Hailstone until his secretary turns out to be a double agent. I'm functionally culturally illiterate and don't know who her historical counterpart is, but she has a magic eight ball and uses it to tell Moe Hailstone's fortune. Moe grabs the ball and hits Curly on the head with it. The ball breaks into three large chunks, and turns out to have an incriminating note inside it. The secretary's plot is foiled and she makes her escape. Wacky comedy stormtroopers are called in, and they march off, kicking each other in the ass. The guy on the end always has it easy.

ACT THREE

There's a big meeting of delegates. The new secretary, a ballerina, comes dancing in. Moe and Curly start dancing. Curly laughs in his regular voice at one point, and says "I'll bet you tell that to all the boys." Oh, and of course, we dwell on the comedy map shown in the picture for a little while, a Stooge comedy motif to be seen later on as well. Why, the Simpsons even had one once! Can't remember when. And so the delegates come in. The three dictators say "Peace! Peace! We want peace!" The delegates are wise to the Orwellian nature of this statement... or maybe they're just jealous worm-eaters taking a break to do some self-loathing out in the open for a change. The boys give 'em the works. Curly gets out the golf clubs and hits them on the head. Finding this not sporting enough, he gets golf balls out, puts them on the rug and hits them at the delegates. Some of the delegates get hit, but Larry gets a golf ball in his mouth. After the four delegates are defeated, the knuckleheads' fortunes go from bad to worse. The townsfolk of Moronica (about 99% of them, if you will...) riot and start to storm the Hailstone headquarters. The three decide to release the lions. And so, down they go to release the lions. They should've gotten someone else to do it, because, well... I hate to spoil it for you, but there ends up being some very full lions in dictators' clothing emerging from the corner they went behind. Something like that. Too bad this kind of thing doesn't happen in real life to real-life dictators.

***1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Charles and Vlas Parlapanides

Somebody get those boys a Chocofreta! Sorry, folks, gotta keep it short this week, which won't be hard in the case of the Parlapanideses. Charley's clearly got the leg up of the two brothers: he's younger, he knows Demetri Martin, and hell! Look @ that smile! Sky's the limit, but alas, they're not astronauts. Charley cut his teeth under Scott Rudin on The Royal Tenenbaums, among other things, but clearly the 2010's will be their most awesome decade ever. They've got Immortals under their belt! How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people? There's no turning back now. Careful, though... better keep fetching coffee for the rest of the demigods if you don't want to get banished again!

Puss does the booting

That's where I've seen that face before! Sorry, had to go for it. Well, Tower Heist's probably #1... it's a couple hours yet before the polls open... I mean, before the box office tallies come out. Maybe I should try to get some sleep. Wait, wait, gotta do my Farmville chores first...
(next day) Shoulda known! Guess if you're a professional critic, you must be baffled! The realistic drama about the Iranian family trying to get by in rural Kansas should have been #1 this weekend! It's going to win several Oscars, right? No, if you're a professional critic these days, you know the dumb Adam Sandler pic's going to clean up on a certain weekend, or the latest Pixar-ish film. Don't kid yourselves: the technicians behind these movies are putting everything they got into making a smart, technically accomplished film you've never seen before. If it's a remake, there'll be a twist on it. Or in the case of the new Footloose, no twist at all! A complete, faithful remake with a fresh young cast! THAT'S the twist! Same old, moldy screenwriter, but still! No, Tower Heist will just have to settle with #2. Poor wealthy Brett Ratner. That's the price of Hollywood success: the more money you make, the more you're hated. Just ask Michael Bay! You gotta strike back however you can. The other debut this week is Harold & Kumar 3D. How they get smoke to be three dimensional I'll never know. Someone's going to get a technical Oscar for it, I'm sure. Must be computerized then.
Well, that's all the debuts, so my job is done. Johnny English 2 looks like it'll be joining the short list of one-week films. I'll explain at the end of the year...