Not 'Giant' Enough, or Treasure of the Stoogia Madre

It's time for our next Joseph Q. Besser-based Stooge short, Oil's Well that Ends Well.  Speaking of ending well, there's only a small handful of these left!  And according to Wikipedia, they all incorporate previous footage from other shorts.  Gotta get back to my math again...
Oh, and I should probably give a shout out to my close confidant who turned me on to this one well before I got to it.  They decided too that, yeah, maybe it was time to brave the wilds of the creepy Besser Forest.  You know, just to try something different for a change.  Anyway, let's just dive right in, shall we?  So, this is a remake of the Curly classic, Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise.  However, there's only a teentsy tiny portion of the footage from that one reused over again.  I won't bother counting the wheezing sounds that are reused for the water pump, just point out that they're reused as well.
Now, maybe this isn't something I can blame on Joe, but part of the joy of Stooge films used to be that they would lose their on-screen jobs.  And not just lose them, mind you, but send their employers into a murderous rage.  Case in point: The Tooth Will Out.  I think that's the one... oh, yeah.  Now THAT'S the stuff!  I've said it before, but... God bless you, 69789Darius!  Keep on bringing the classics to the people.  Sony be damned... just kidding, Sony!  Anyway, back to gruesome reality.  I guess the Stooges are growing up after all!  They've got plot to peddle now!  Losing their jobs is but a mere afterthought now!  Now, I know the Stooges have had a mama in the past, but a papa? ...okay, it's slowly coming back to me.  Gee, if there was only a blog that reviewed all the Stooge films.  Sure would come in handy right about now!  3 Dumb Clucks features a father of the Stooges, for one.  SPOILER ALERT: we don't see the father this time, though in retrospect I find it hard to believe that Joe Besser would pass up a chance to play the role of the father.  Wonder how he'd treat Larry and Moe?  Hmm!  That's a real head-scratcher!
Okay, back to work.  It seems like all of Curly's old lines get done by Larry now, but Curly's wishing theme is carried on by Joe.  I guess it's supposed to make him look good somehow.  Sorry, but for some reason I don't feel like cataloguing all his "wishes" that come true... and frankly, neither does Larry.  Why, he does it a second time here! ...anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.  The boys receive a letter from their pa that he's in the hospital and that he needs money for an operation.  Ah, the good ol' USA.  Even back then, the finest health care in the world.  Anyway, pa sows the seed of a brilliant idea: find uranium on that old mining property of theirs!  This will kill two birds with one stone: pa's operation will be paid for, and there'll be money left over to join the one percent!  I'll try not to burst that bubble... well, okay, just one question.  Why exactly were they worried about losing their jobs?  Why haven't they thought about their mining property before this?  Oh well.  I just don't know how it is, I guess.  Moe property, Moe problems, I always say.  Actually, Larry bursts the bubble too, listing off a list of things they'll need to start mining.  To cut to the chase, sort of, Joe makes a few more wishes that come true.  Small things for now.  But Joe's not totally inhuman.  With great power comes great responsibility, and Joe starts getting spooked at his good run of wishes coming true.  Moe backs away slowly... if that doesn't sum up the Stooge fan's relationship with Joe Besser right there, well, nothing will.
Next scene: that damn cabin again!  Wonder if they're going to have potatoes and eggs again... damn, I'm hungry.  Oh well, only 10 hours til breakfast... nope, Moe's going to make oatmeal, when suddenly... Larry realizes he forgot to buy the milk.  And then, we all learn something about Joe that I wish I never knew... he can't eat oatmeal without milk.  Oh well, carry on I must... like Yoda?  And so, Joe wishes for milk... and lo and behold, his wish gets granted again.  Larry makes a quip that should resonate with our meat-obsessed culture of the now.  And once again, Joe proves he's a stone cold killa.  Look at that indifference!  Look at that strength!  Dayamn... And once again, Moe's a total killjoy.  Larry has a rare moment when he's enjoying himself, so Moe of course has to put that to a stop quickly.  This leads to a rare occasion where Moe uses the block.  I don't ever remember him doing that!  Gee, too bad there's not some sort of blog where... anyway, Larry's steam doesn't cool down as quickly anymore.  Moe tells him "Toss me those groceries!" and, dayamn, Larry's got a big can and he's winding up like a baseball pitcher!  Larry stops himself at the last minute, of course, but only because Moe sees what he's doing.  I guess we're not quite at the last straw yet.
Anyway, Joe comes in with the cow.  As for milking the cow, Larry's up to bat first... hmm!  I wonder if this shot of the cow turning around is old stock footage.  This will change my calculations, if only slightly.  Maybe it'll be up to 1.75 percent old footage.  Larry ends up getting kicked by the cow and he smashes against the wall, getting hit by some falling stuff.  The cans miss him, but he gets hit dead on by a container of flour.  Moe  shakes his head and takes over the milking of the cow.  Moe gets some much needed revenge on Joe by squirting him in the face.  Joe sounds a bit like Curly here... now I'm getting scared!!!
Now, maybe I'm just an immature teenager at heart, or maybe coming up is the best damn passage of this damn film.  Why?  Because shi... stuff gets blown up real good.  And look!  They've got a Geiger counter and everything!  No expense was spared here.  And Neo-Luddites take note: no matter how technology advances, the following Stooge joke is timeless.  Moe asks "What does the Geiger counter say?"  And Larry answers... well, best to see for yourself.  Soon after, Larry accidentally hits Moe in the head with his mining hammer... you know, that special kind with a chisel-shaped triangular head?  Note how Larry apologizes to Moe... kinda half-hearted, dontcha think?  Still, Larry's punishment seems a bit severe.  I think Moe was using a real rock by mistake!  Again, Larry's steam doesn't cool so easily here!  Dayamn... now who's the stone kold killa?  ...never mind, Joe proves himself Top Dawg again by chucking one of those clusters of dynamite sticks at Moe.  Moe scolds Joe, but Joe's hearing is bad, so he gets up close to hear what Moe had to say.  If this here scene doesn't highlight the tension that Joe brings to the group, well, nothing does.  Now, I know certain quarters want to give Joe credit for everything good the Stooges ever done, but I must protest.  Take this scene, for example.  Joe breaks the Fourth Wall.  Can he leave nothing intact on his crusade of destruction, for God's sake?  Now, some like to think that this is the only time that they broke the Fourth Wall, or that Joe did it with such panache, making all other attempts look like a proverbial pile of puke.  Well, to them I say... what's THIS?  Chopped liver?  Here's another good one.  Anyway, we move on to Joe's next labored gag.  For me, it's an homage to the following scene from the veritable Curly classic How High Is Up?  Now, if this scene doesn't further illustrate the tension between Joe and the other two, nothing does.
Next scene: now, to rather blatantly pad out the running time of the film, it's another case of Stooges v. Bunk Bed From Hell.  You might remember similar struggles from such Curly classics as I Can Hardly Wait and G.I. Wanna Home.  Here, it's like Berth Marks but without the moving train.  As usual, Moe suffers a few of the usual consequences of taking the lower berth.  Joe is so weak that he never makes it to the top level!  At least Curly got up there!  Further tension between Joe and Moe here.  The only part that seems a little unique is Moe's following attempt to help Larry get to the upper berth.  Can I safely call that a guilty pleasure?  I hope so... oh, Joe's just so sad and weak.  No two ways about it.  And yet, once again he proves he's just a stone cold killa.  He's like a cornered skunk, I suppose.  Don't mess with Joe.  After all, when all is said and done, Larry and Moe end up on the top bunk, having been rendered unconscious by the adjacent wall.
And finally... a sad tribute to the scene from the source of the old footage, safe to say.  The pump gets to wheeze twice, and plus there's no dramatic tension of the oil well being on someone else's land.  When the oil starts flowing, they're way more worried about stopping it.  You know, because they're losing so much money.  Not to mention the fact that you actually feel something for Curly when he gets yanked off of the gushing oil and plummets to the ground towards what would be a painful death for anyone else.  Joe gets on the ride a second time!  Maybe this time the fall will kill him.  You can say it all you want, Joe, but Oil's Well does not end well.

Length of short: 16m21s
Length without old footage: 16m7s17frames

percentage of old footage: 1.3%!  A record low!

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

The High Hat's Triumphant Return

God, I love these Disney cartoons... oh, right, it's still Popeye's declining years.  What is it with these cartoon screenwriters always being such icon whores?  ...like it?  Icon whore.  It's a new catch phrase I'm trying to shop around.  Of course... boy, the web is so slow tonight!  What gives?... nope, they don't have it at urbandictionary.com yet.  Basically, it's someone who thinks in terms of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Elton John, Lady Gaga, Touré, what have you, and constantly uses the greatest single three words in the English language at the moment: epic, iconic and game changing.  And now, here's Popeye clinging to William Tell's coattails and overture.  Who's Popeye hanging with next?  Einstein?
Now, normally this would mean I have to study up on my history, but I don't have a lot of time this week, so I guess the William Tell mythology will just have to wait.  Needles to say, Popeye finds himself drawn into it.  One day, Popeye's just walking along, minding his own business, and apparently unaware of what century he now finds himself in.  We find William Tell, apparently before he made his bones as an icon of history, and he's just randomly shooting arrows at people.  Popeye gets caught in the crossfire and tries to fight back.  But alas, Popeye's run afoul of a guy even more egocentric than Popeye is.  Those baby blues!  That cute fat face!  How could you not get seduced by Mr. Tell?  And so, Popeye gets caught up in William Tell's current troubles, when Mr. Tell starts thumbing his nose at the local king.
Anyway, for reasons I'm not curious enough to look over again, Popeye pretends to be William Tell's son.  The angered king is familiar with Mr. Tell's archery skills, and therefore gets the usual perverse pleasure of pitting family members against one another.  If Tell can hit an apple off Popeye's.. I mean, his son's head, all will be forgiven.  Little surprise, but I guess I'll say SPOILER ALERT anyway, Popeye gets shot right in the heart... which by coincidence is being protected by a spinach can.  It's about the five minute mark, so it's spinach time.  Popeye saves the day, and William Tell gets to continue pretending with his surrogate son.  Meh indeed.

**1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Jim Brown

Good grief, Charlie Brown!  How many documentary directors are named Jim Brown?  There's gotta be a finite supply!  Anyway, here's the next one.  Welp, I'm running my specialized web crawler software as we speak.  Surely this guy can get to Spielberg if he wanted to!  Okay, sure, he's not a football player, nor does he probably own a Scottish estate... yet!  I bet he could if he put his mind to it.  Just give him some time.

Uh-yep, it's the turtles, all right!

...could someone call Mark Zuckerberg for me?  Facebook's down.  Anyway, I forget already who the big one is this weekend, but we've got all kinds of R-rated goodies on the proverbial horizon!  Sin City 2, ... there's others, I'm sure.  Also, before I forget... what the hell happened to Boyhood?  What, has the novelty worn off just that quickly?  It's only the most critically acclaimed film in a very long time, and America responds with "meh"?  What, no one wants to see how Patricia Arquette has changed over time?... okay, maybe that's the reason.
And so, the major ad campaigns rule again, and the latest reincarnation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has its day in the sun.  However, it's a big forest and three other saplings get their share of the light: an homage to the Steven Spielberg-produced classic Twister called Into the Storm... why did I think Mark Wahlberg was in that?  Then there's the Spielberg and Oprah produced The Hundred-Foot Journey, referring to the distance they had to walk to sign the paperwork, and finally, another sequel with no number called Step Up - All In.  There was an article someplace touting the great benefits of being a below-the-radar movie franchise like the Step Up series.  Personally, the older I get, the more I see movies and music and television as youth-delivery devices.  Maybe more like adolescence delivery devices if you're like me and pining for your ill-spent adolescence.  Well, we can't all be great like that Gatsby fella, can we?  Too many chiefs, not enough Indians-kinduva deal.

No Reservation for Old Men

From the director of... Shakespeare in Love?  Seriously?  No, it's not that old football dude, it's a different John Madden, and he's attempting to shed his Shakespeare cred and get into Coen brothers territory with this Elmore Leonard-adapted tale of what happens at the intersection of Real Estate Boulevard and Low Life Parkway in Killshot.  Unfortunately, the story dies a death of a thousand paper cuts... maybe about five or six hundred, to be fair.  Logic is not as rigorously applied here as it is in Coen brothers films and commercials.
Yes, 2008 was a busy year for Mickey Rourke.  There was this movie and an appearance in a Bret Easton Ellis movie, in addition to his big Oscar push for The Wrestler.  So if you're willing to buy him here as a Native American, it might help a little.  Then we've got Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a lowlife criminal ruled by his impulses.  His girlfriend is played by Rosario Dawson, and I'm assuming the role is a little less thankless than her role in Pluto Nash.  Their relationship reminded me a bit of Samuel L. Jackson and Bridget Fonda in Jackie Brown.
To turn this into a veritable Love Pentagon, there's the estranged Colsons, played by Diane Lane and Thomas Jane... hey!  That rhymes!  No wonder their marriage is on the rocks!  They run afoul of the undynamic duo of Rourke and Gordon-Levitt when Gordon-Levitt's extortion scheme goes from half-baked to completely deflated, like the Stooges' cake in An Ache in Every Stake... sorry, I tried to keep these Three Stooges references mutually exclusive and separated from regular film interviews, but it's tough in this case.
And so, the bad guys spend the rest of the movie trying to get rid of the witnesses.  To skip ahead a bit, and ... SPOILER ALERT... the beleaguered Colsons end up going into the Witness Protection program.  There's a false resolution to the Colsons' troubles, so they end up coming out of the Witness Protection program.  Somehow, it doesn't feel right, and I blame this on GoodFellas.  The Hills didn't just come out of Witness Protection.  It was the end of the movie, and they were pretty much in there for life.  Sure, Henry had trouble adjusting to it all, but still.
There's a couple good moments here, like Lionel Adam's last scene, and when... SPOILER ALERT... Wayne Colson tries to win back Carmen with some smooth talk on their porch at the end of the movie.  Then, he notices the dead body lying on the floor in the kitchen, and he smoothly changes his tactics.  Really, aren't all courtships like this?  Admit it, girls.  Ultimately, however, I prefer my movies to be half-ass logically consistent.  First the mob wants to kill Mickey Rourke's character, then they help him out.  C'mon, guys, don't be incompetent like Fat Tony on The Simpsons.  Also, I forget when it happened, but I suddenly found myself rooting against Blackbird and his would-be protegé and replacement/surrogate kid brother Gordon-Levitt and, like Joe Pesci in 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, I didn't care about their goals so much, let alone if they were completed or not.

**1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Short Reviews - August 2014

Nothing ever happens in August!!!

The Good Doctor - This just in: Legolas just threw a punch at Justin Bieber!  Street cred achieved.

Inventing David Geffen - On PBS.  Remember PBS?  Doing stuff the private sector would never do, like pay tribute to David Geffen.  Just started watching it, and somehow I don't think Monkey Zetterland's going to be a part of it.

Jayne Mansfield's Car - AKA Even More of A Family Thing.  Good double bill with Parkland

Monty Python's Flying Circus - Well, I hate to go to war with the A.V. Club, but I think they're being far too hard on the "Mr. Neutron" episode.  The fact that it's being reviewed some forty-odd years after it first aired is testament to ... something!  Okay, so all the Python episodes weren't great.  I like the Mr. Neutron one, damn it.  Besides, it fits in all too well with our now comic-book and Star Wars-dominated culture.

The Brothers Grimm - Good double bill with... what else?  The Adventures of Baron Munchausen!  Can't remember why, though............................................

Fifty Shades of Grey - What is it with peoples' fascination with billionaires?  We gotta get over this together, people.  I wonder if millionaires ever feel left out.  They should, because they're losers.  Mere millionaires just will not do anymore.  Bore-ring.

Mr. Saturday Night - Alas, more melodramatic than everyone expected, but maybe time will be kind to this one.  As film critics often have to do, they have to boil a film down to one scene, so for me, here it is: Buddy Young, his brother and his wife are all sitting on the couch watching the classic "This Is Your Story" sketch with Sid Caesar.  The brother and the wife are laughing and enjoying themselves, but Buddy Young (Billy Crystal) is sitting there, stone-faced.  Why?  Because Sid was the man, that's why, and Buddy knew it!  This just might be Billy Crystal's masterpiece.

The November Man - Matador 2?

December Boys - Oh, Harry Potter.  The work of undoing Harry Potter never ended, did it?

The January Man - Probably a classic

Summer in February - It's not global warming, that's for sure!  Hah hah hah (nervous laugh)...

The Ides of March - Well, it got Beau Willimon the House of Cards gig, so that's worth something, right?  RIGHT?!!

April Rain - For those of you who think that those Expendables movies are bad... how sad is it to have these sub-par imitators?

Mother, May I Sleep With Danger? - I say let 'em learn the hard way.  Maybe that makes me a bad parent, but so be it.

Henry & June - Wait a minute, that wasn't about the calendar...

Born on the Fourth of July - I was going to launch into giving this thing more Oscars.  What a strange year!  Stone won for directing, but Driving Miss Daisy won for Best Picture.  Why, the guy who directed that didn't even get nominated!  Go figure.

August: Osage County - Meh

The Teahouse of the August Moon - That's more like it!  This is one of those films that people always say they watched, like Lawrence of Arabia or Gone With the Wind or The Wizard of Oz (1939).  But I bet they were texting the whole time, or whatever the equivalent activity was at that time

September - Fare thee well, Elaine Stritch.  So much for the cast reunion of this one... oh, right, and Mia Farrow as well

The Hunt for Red October - Hooray for Mace Neufeld's kid or grandkid, the greatest freakin poker player on TV right now!

Sweet November - I think I've said this already about Pat O'Connor's movies, but it bears repeating, and for two reasons.  I know, there's always two reasons, so here they are. 1) Someone seems to have secret access to my blog and they seem to be taking down stuff they find objectionable, like my diatribes about Pat O'Connor, and 2) his movies are the stuff that classy DVD collections are made of!  You got your Lawrence of Arabias and your Out of Africas.  Every collection must have those two.  And from there, it's nothing but Pat O'Connor.  What more do you need?  You got your Inventing the Abbotts, you got your Dancing at Lughnasa, you got your Stars and Bars.  You know, movies about photogenic white people doing photogenic white things.  Okay, sure, if you're black it'll be Tyler Perry in your collection, so just think of Pat O'Connor as the white Tyler Perry.  Sure, he's not as prolific, but there's probably a holier-than-thou quasi-racist reason for that, who knows?

A Warm December - I go back to December all the time...

The Story of Us - Looks a lot like a tragedy now!

Syriana - You know, the meek shall inherit the earth... but only after the oil billionaire douchebags have raped every last square inch of it

Picture Perfect - Oh, Jennifer Aniston... if only you could make this movie for the rest of your life

Just Go With It - ...close enough

Main Street - Boy!  Mo warehouse, mo problems.........

Roman Holiday - With Gregory Peck as Cary Grant

Brass Target - On TCM?  Yuck.  The AMC-ification of Turner Classic Movies has begun...........

The Maze Runner - America's Next Hunger Games has arrived!!!!

Hey Bulldog

We leave the world of money behind and get back to fundamentals with our next Tom and Jerry cartoon, The Bodyguard.  I'm guessing it's the mouse's bodyguard... just a wild guess.
---
(after viewing the short) It's a semi-familiar theme in these one-reel cartoons, but when it's done this well it's hard to complain.  It's the proverbial lion with a thorn in its paw... ah, Christians.  What is your obsession with the iconography of the Roman Empire?  Then again, there's Androcles, and there's Aesop.  And there's my résumé for Senior Researcher at the Rachel Maddow show.  Symbiosis, baby!  Attraction of opposites!  And that thin line between Plagiarism and homage.
The point being that somehow Tom and Jerry instinctively know that they alone aren't enough to carry a one-reeler.  New characters need to be added to the mix.  After Jerry Mouse hides himself in a garden behind the sign for potatoes, he sees the new character: a bulldog trapped in the back of a dogcatcher's van.  Jerry Mouse liberates the dog, and the dog is grateful.  "If you ever need me, just whistle!"  And of course, the great Billy Bletcher does the voice of the bulldog... and at one point, Tom the Cat as well!  Double duty!
After a couple poundings, one with alliterations based on words beginning with 'P', (the twitch of the cat's whiskers at 1:48 ought to put you in a digital-type mood!) the cat eventually figures out what's going on, so he comes up with an ingenious ruse to thwart the mouse's ability to whistle.  As if that wasn't bad enough, the bulldog can't quite figure out what's going on.  They're apparently kinda dumb, you see.  Ain't that always a trade-off?  Why can't you have both brains and brawn?  Like Jillian Michaels?  Anyway, I further hate to spoil the ending, but just as Stella got her groove back... I confess, I haven't read the book or seen the movie, so I don't know if she actually did get her groove back or not.  Besides!  It's not the destination, it's the journey! ... so too does the mouse get his whistle back, and after the resultant hurricane winds subside, the cat prepares for the worst.  Also, how does a mouse have the strength to lift an anvil?  I mean, seriously?  Anyway, we're all expecting the worst... but that wouldn't be too funny, would it?

Good double bill with: Bad Luck Blackie or Scratch a Tiger (not on YouTube)

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Besser-ella, or Zircon Girls Are Easy

Well, it's a Joe Besser Stooge short, so there's a high mathematical probability that it's about flying saucers.  This will be their third and last ever, and it's called Flying Saucer Daffy.  I said short, so Have Rocket - Will Travel doesn't count.
---
Well, now that I've actually watched the short... I couldn't help but notice the production values!  Really, it's been a trend with these Besser shorts.  To put it bluntly, was this actually directed by Russ Meyer?  I don't remember the Stooges relying on tit jokes so much.  I mean, in the vast history of Curly and Shemp, they must have said "I'm happy to see them!" at least once or twice.  There was that one Shemp short where Christine McIntyre offers Moe some cookies, and he quips "I love cookies!  Especially blond ones."  And of course, Shemp flirting with the curvaceous devil in... I forget which one, but it was quite integral to the plot... wasn't it?  My point being, somehow the Stooges' own showmanship always kept the boys above water.  Here, they're obviously furiously dog paddling to merely stay afloat, and the lead weight tied to the ankles of Moe and Lawrence that is Joe Besser isn't helping.  And so, the American preoccupation with bosoms (kewl!  Right at the top...) comes to the rescue in Flying Saucer Daffy.
Not that the film doesn't have charms on its own.  Maybe I just can't admit it, but this one's rather inspired in a few spots.  We meet the Wicked Stepmother first, and then her two proverbial daughters (Moe and Larry).  The three of them are sorry excuses for packrats, as it were.  Once again, everyone else has to afford Joe the opportunity to appear the virtuous type, as he makes his entrance with his arms full of groceries.  Already there's a wasted gag opportunity: "Did you wipe your feet?" asks the aunt.  Joe says "Yes."  ...oh, so we're not going to be full-on Bizarro World here?  Wotta ripoff!  Not even a "I told you to never wipe your feet!"  There's a funny joke about TV dinners.  Oh, I'm just enjoying myself way too much with this.
There's a sink full of dirty dishes that Joe has to clean up; it looks like dishes from a different movie, but oh well.  Soon after, Joe makes the literary reference complete by wishing for his fairy godmother to come along.  It happens later.  And of course, what Joe Besser Stooge short would be complete without his whining?  He gets particularly whiny here when a struggle erupts over his camera.
Let's move on.  So, the premise is that Joe's got two weeks paid vacation at his job... whatever that might be.  Ah, the good old days of strong unions.  He's forced to bring Moe and Larry along.  Fade-in on the camping grounds... hmm!  Another new vista to the world of the Stooges.  Maybe Besser's not all that bad.  This sequence with Moe's a little strange because it appears that all of Moe's lines were re-dubbed later.  His mouth must've been full of saliva from holding the cigar in his mouth, lol.
And so, the notion is bourne.  Instead of their usual plot of getting some quick money from a reward for catching a criminal, now it's for a snapshot of a U.F.O.  And, in another inspired moment, a strong wind starts to blow, and a pair of picnic plates stuck together starts to rise into the air, much like one of Ed Wood's spaceships!  Joe Besser aside, how can you not like that?
And so, Besser snaps a photo of a squirrel as the plate flies by.  Besser's got some strange Polaroid camera that can develop pictures instantly.  Besser sees the plate in the photo, gets mad about it and walks off, giving Moe and Larry a chance to plan on getting that reward money all for themselves.  Here's kind of a funny gag where Larry grabs hold of this blanket over their car... it caught me off guard at the time, but now that I think about it, I think it was used in one of the Home Alone movies.  Yucch.
Ah, the old branch gag.  How I've missed you!  Anyway, business experts Moe and Larry end up using Joe's photo to get riches and fame.  I say Joe's photo, because justice is universal and harsh, and it comes up later.  Also, there's indeed nothing new under the sun, but as far as I know there's still no biography of a successful famous person that says "Their business empire grew out of a photograph of a flying saucer."  A whole fictional movie, sure, but not a factual single photo.  And so, several headlines and one wheelbarrow full of money later (Me Wantee!), Moe and Larry are on Easy Street with a capital E and a capital Z, so they either stretched that $10,000 further than I thought, or maybe they picked up some other lucrative deals along the way while they were at it.  Either way, Moe's got the new, sleeker haircut (apparently on Besser's insistence) and he's got a lot of eye shadow now!  What's up with that?  Anyway, vengeance comes to the door at this point, and Moe and Larry try to pin it all on Joe.  Of course, Joe's not having any part of that, and Moe and Larry have to go to jail... that instant, of course.  Emil Sitka takes the wheelbarrow out of the room, and Joe grabs a couple bucks from it on the way out.  I've never seen Joe so happy.  If that doesn't sum up what's wrong with Joe Besser in one moment, I don't know what does.
Next scene: Joe's all alone back at that camping site.  Must've filmed that part in the same day.  And so, since a fake spaceship caused all these problems, surely a real one will set things right again.  Well, when seeing spaceships is your drug, it can be a long, hard road for a long long while.  Just ask Roy Neary!  Fortunately for Joe, he doesn't have to wait long for his fix, as his extraterrestrial Fairy Godmother comes right away, from a planet called Zircon, incidentally.  But the two babes piloting the ship are far from nesosilicates, baby.  Nothing but sexy carbon for ol' long suffering Joe.  And so, Tyra and Elektra come up to Joe.  He looks at their tits and says "Wow!  What mamas!"  He may be fifty years old and act like a pre-tween infant, but he's not dead.  Not that I'm not happy for Joe.  Why look!  He even gets a moment to pad out the length of the film by cleaning up his campsite.
Next scene: we end as we began, with the Wicked Aunt sitting in a chair and drinking, but at least the surroundings haven't gotten completely run down just yet!  Lol.  The spaceship money cleaned up the place a little bit, but don't worry; she'll have it back to Grey Gardens in no time.  And once again, Besser proves himself a stone cold killer when he gets rebuffed by Moe, Larry and their screen mother.  She's about to hit Joe over the head with a bottle, but Joe accidentally knocks her out first with his bottle.  Joe eventually gets all the headlines re-heaped upon him, and we see him riding in the back of a limo with a big fat cigar in his mouth, and his arms around the two Zirconian space babes.  "Boy, this is the life!" exclaims Joe.  The only problem with this scene is that he looks more like a corrupt mayor in a regular film than like a Stooge in a Stooge film.  The short ends showing Moe and Larry sharing a cell in jail, apparently just off the parade route, as there's some confetti in the air.  Now I feel more at home!

Epilogue: This may not be the last, but it's definitely the first Joe Besser short where he tells himself "Ow!  Not so hard!"  Now, if that isn't what's wrong with Joe Besser all summed up in a single moment, I don't know what is.

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

Hamateur Day

This is another one of those Popeye cartoons with extra commentary on the DVD, so it's either good or historically significant.  At this point, probably the latter.
And so, we start with Olive running at top speed, holding... nay, clutching a newspaper.  She gets home to Popeye and Swee'Pea in the crib (I assume) and we finally see the headline: "Vaudeville Coming Back."  Hmm!  Maybe I should listen to that commentary!
---
Ouch.  Well, here's a damning comment: I was watching the DVD on the television, and the way our house is, you can do the dishes and see the television out of the corner of your eye at the same time.  The person who was doing dishes at the time said that it didn't seem like the greatest Popeye cartoon in the world.  Oh, s'z'nap!  Sure, it's awful, and sure, the Fleischers had seen better days, but... oh, there's just no getting around it.  Why, it's nothing but a series of plot left-overs strung together like some kind of plot blood sausage!  I HATE things like that!  Like that Pink Panther cartoon, Pink-Outs... man, they got everything on the YouTubes.  But to be fair, as the commentary guy points out, there's no spinach in this one... I don't think that's a first, though.  But I think it's the first imitations that Popeye does.  He imitates Jimmy Durante (meh), Stan Laurel (good, but juggling was more of W.C. Fields' shtick) and Groucho Marx, and I dare say they've got a gag worthy of the Marxes: a pool cue comes out from Stage Right, and Popeye as Groucho says "I think that's my cue to leave!"  Ah, Vaudeville.  If you didn't make it there, you probably didn't make it in film or on Broadway.  Take the Cherry Sisters, for example!  Never mind, I've heard they're the pits.  Ha-cha-cha-cha!

Good double bill with: Hamateur Night

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Jim Brown

...the boxer guy from Mars Attacks!?  He's a director, too?  Well, he ought to be able to get to Spielberg through his connection to Tim Burton.  Lucky guy.

Battle-Guard Galactica

Oh, I just remembered the thought I had for my burgeoning stand-up comedian career... what's the deal with these digital characters anyway?  I know, they prefer to be called "Virtual Americans."  Well, I'll be damned if that raccoon and Celery Head don't rule the box office this weekend.  They've been running ads for Guardians of the Galaxy for a couple months now.  Alas, director James Gunn was legally prohibited from mentioning the other stuff he's directed before this.  But why is it that all these digital characters have to do stuff like karate and gymnastics?  When are we going to have a Pixar film of Chekov or about the Holocaust?  Only then will we achieve true equality for Virtual Americans.
---
[Sunday] The other debut this week is Get on Up, the latest from The Help director Tate Taylor.  It's the story of James Brown, and I'm sure it spends a lot of time dwelling on the '60s and '70s as much as possible.  Hippie culture!  Afros!  Shoes with goldfish in them!  And spangles, spangles, spangles.  Just don't be surprised if they gloss over those pesky domestic violence charges.

The Director Is In

It's been a while since I sat down with the fam and watched a movie.  That was a couple nights ago, but I think I still remember most of it.  The film?  The 1997 Oscar-worthy classic, As Good As It Gets, a title which apparently didn't wow the Oscar community as much as a film called Titanic did at the time.  I mean, it doesn't get any better!  So why so few nominations?  It's AS GOOD AS IT GETS, for God's sake!
And apparently, it was also describing the directing efforts of James L. Brooks, who so far has done Spanglish and How Do You Know since... and I don't think they've been referred to on The Simpsons yet.  But let's leave the title aside for now.  Let's move on to the cameos of the directors, specifically Lawrence Kasdan who plays a psychologist (this obviously gave him the idea for Mumford about a small-town psychologist) and Harold Ramis who plays a ... pediatrician?  But a damn good one, a damn good, pricey one... is Brooks trying to say that film directors are like doctors in a way?  What does that say about Albert Pyun then?  He must be the Nick Riviera of film directors... let's see if he writes back to me.  Nah, I guess that's over. :(  Oh, right.  Todd Solondz is on a bus at some point.  So, he must be playing a pre-med student who hasn't been told to go into acting yet.  Owwch!  Turns out Todd studied with Strasberg, right?
Anyway, the plot.  Spoiler alert: it's a movie about romance.  Sure, a romance with characters more fleshed out than a Nicholas Sparks novel, and more damaged than your average romance pic, but a romance nonetheless.  I think these things have a shelf life.  In our age-obsessed-on-overdrive internet culture now, I couldn't help but not stop thinking... for God's sake!  Jack Nicholson's old enough to be her... her grandfather!  But he tries nonetheless, as his life's kinda boring and there's not much else to do but wait for death.  Oh, and Greg Kinnear plays a gay guy.  I couldn't help but think of old Hollywood.  You know, how Burt Lancaster used to play Indians, that kind of thing.  Or a fat Midwestern white guy would be Charlie Chan.  I wonder if the gay and lesbian community feel that way about Greg Kinnear in this movie.  If not, I will on their behalf.  I know, I know... bad way to start a sentence, but hey, I didn't say "Let me tell you something I know about the Negro..."  Man, Sean Hannity misses that guy.  I mean, I just saw an SNL documentary where the "token gay guy" and unofficial Sweeney sister Terry Sweeney complained about typecasting.  Doesn't he deserve a shot at playing a Simon Bishop-type Oscar-worthy role?  I think the casting director's answer is ultimately... short answer, no.  Long answer, no, because we don't want an actual gay guy.  We want a heterosexual man that the audience can relate to to play the gay guy.  It was a different era.  Now, as for how you explain this, well... I'll leave that to the experts.
And so, we have a damaged love triangle.  At the center of it all is Job Creator Melvin Udall, played by Jack Nicholson, who's apparently a fill-in for Mickey Spillane, but who suffers from some flavour of OCD.  And he's well off, because he can afford to live alone in an apartment in New York City, and he's got money for extra soap... a lot of extra soap.  We meet Helen Hunt, Melvin's favorite waitress.  For him, the only living waitress in New York, as it were, if you will.  Just think of this as a precursor to The Sessions.  She does.  Her son is allergic to everything, so New York's the perfect city to live.  We meet Greg Kinnear's character tangentially at first, through his dog... his lovable, lovable dog, who, God bless it, can't seem to stay in the apartment.  Jack Nicholson's character puts it in the garbage chute when it tries to urinate on the wall.  Man!  He's worse than Helen's kid!
Now, I don't mean this in a negative way.  I'm trying to be perfectly objective here, but I won't bring up Ayn Rand's name... damn it!  I don't know what exactly she has to do with objectivity.  She's one of the strangest things to ever exist, person or object.  But we do get a glimpse of Kinnear's life.  It's a douchebag-y life, a hot New York artist, throwing a douchebag party for all his douchebag friends.  As it turns out, douchebag friends are also quite the fair-weather friends.  I probably should of... HAVE... stuck with that phraseology, but "fair-weather" is just so... pre-20th century and non-douchebaggy.  Then again, maybe his character's not enough of a douchebag.  If you want to be a douchebag, the first thing you have to do is be careful... especially when you live in New York City, one of the world's great capitals, and therefore one of the world's great gathering places for the world's douchebags.  Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear's character) is not careful, and he doesn't vet his models carefully enough.  See, he likes to paint live people.  But you got to give him credit, as he tries in his own way to help the less fortunate... so no hanging with Ayn Rand, that's for sure!  His acknowledging of the lower classes ultimately leads to his demise... well, near demise.  Spoiler alert... c'mon, do you really need spoiler alerts for a movie that's 17 years old?  He gets beat up by his subject's friends, a couple of real lower-class douchebags... was that Jamie Kennedy?  Hah!  Wonder if he was acting burned out.  Oh, s'z'nap!  Anyway, long story short, Kinnear ends up in the hospital with his face looking like a pink baseball and... boom.  Out of the ranks of the upper class douchebags he goes.  They hate reality... which is a good segue, because we get an introductory romantic scene for Helen Hunt.  She has her hands full with the waitressing job and the adult baby that is Melvin Udall, and she has to come home to her allergic son.  What's a girl to do?  What, is she consigned to a lifetime of she-bop forever and ever amen?  She doesn't think so, and she attempts a date with a hot young stud who looks like either Peter Krause or Christen Hayden... Hayden Christensen!  That's it... boy, was I way off.  This is the guy, billed as Carol's Date.  Some part he's got in this picture!  As usual, vomit is the penultimate date-ender, just like this one SNL skit with Chris Kattan.  "Too much reality," the guy says.
To quickly summarize, the film kinda goes on too long.  Think of it as Brooks' nod to Say Anything... , which also kinda goes on too long, and which he produced!  Also, these three people seem to be amateurs when it comes to relationships, and the way they can change your life.  Sure, they say some romantic things, and Simon Bishop and Melvin Udall eventually have one of the pre-Judd Apatow bro-mances that pollute the cinematic landscape these days, but...  Everything is a revelation, and everything is new and scary and they can't handle it.  My God!  Caring for a dog is different if you've never had one!  My God!  Men can say some stupid, awful things!  Clearly these three were made for each other.  But don't worry, One Percenters, your representative Melvin Udall comes out looking okay, especially since his financial situation doesn't seem to change all that much.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Jack Nicholson's character is kinda like Archie Bunker.  Now, I don't know if he deserved the Oscar, but it looks like he did some research into OCD, and he got to stick it to Burt Reynolds yet again!  Tee hee hee.  And Lisa Simpson got to play something different for a change, which is cool.... City Slickers 1, not so much.  But if she's happy, I'm happy.  I guess what I'm trying to say is I had an okay time.  And I'm freaking out because screenwriter Mark Andrus has a new movie out called And So It Goes... is it a sequel, perhaps?  ...nope, but similar plot.  Michael Douglas is the Jack Nicholson character, and instead of a dog, he has to care for a granddaughter.  Basically a sequel.

good double bill with... what else?  About Schmidt!!.. or maybe Something's Gotta Give

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

It's a Million Dollar Mystery to me how I got this far......................

Well, Tom and Jerry live on on YouTube, good news.  The bad news is: they apparently have to appear in some sort of window box.  Nothing creepy about that!  Also, the audio cuts out at the two minute mark... Still, beggars (with the DVD) can't be choosy, so let's take a gander at our next non-Disney film with "million" in the title, and it's called The Million Dollar Cat.  Keeping in mind, of course, that back then a million dollars just might be closer to a billion today, give or take a few hundred million.
On to the setup.  It's quite simple, really.  We start with our usual opening high-jinks: in the instant case, Tom the cat is chucking darts at Jerry Mouse, with only an apple to protect him.  And then... the telegram arrives, which changes everything.  Why, we'd all still hope to get a telegram like this, or even a letter or phone call!  Alas, the rich only say they believe in "trickle down" economics.  Let some other sucker do the actual trickling, am I right?  Needles to say, the stages of becoming part of the upper class seems to come in five distinct stages, and it's basically the Kübler-Ross model, with the order slightly changed.  First comes acceptance: "It's going to be okay.  This sudden change in my economic standing in society's going to be okay.  I can't fight it, I might as well prepare for it."
Then, comes anger... usually over the unintended consequences: inheritance tax, greedy relatives coming out of the woodwork, the fine print.  Much like Warner Brothers' The Wabbit Who Came to Supper, the money is contingent on an extremely binding "non-cruelty to animals" clause which, of course, is part of the bedrock foundations of these animated toons.  Tom soon finds himself saying unto himself, "Why would God let this happen?  It's not fair!"  Anger leads to denial, denial leads to bargaining, and bargaining leads to depression.  If you're lucky and you still have some of that pile of money left, depression may lead to some more bargaining, or you might just have to keep writing checks for "one dollar and NINE CENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Fortunately for Tom Cat, no greedy relatives come out of the woodwork, and we learn secondhand that, indeed, excess money is always a positive influence on people, as newspaper headline after newspaper headline shows the progression of Tom Cat from relatively normal housecat to eccentric socialite.  He bathes in cream for the cameras!  "Sips while he Dips" says the headline above the picture.  But as the wise man once said, mo money, mo problems.  The high on life that excess money provides can't last forever, and it seems like no matter where Tom Cat goes, Jerry Mouse is right there, with that handy telegram, of course.  Boy!  Worse than lawyers, he is.
So, for a while, Tom really, really tries to stay the hell away from the mouse, and be on his best behaviour, but the mouse persists on being a di... a jerk.  I'll spare you the gory details.  Also, I hate to sound like a jaded sophisticate, but ... SPOILER ALERT... Tom finally has enough and, after filling up with angry red juice... so creepy... he tears up the telegram and tries to beat the s... stuffing out of the mouse.  Of course, he's unofficially obligated to point out to the audience the sacrifice he's making... but I dunno.  Are the neighbours really that great?
You can skip this last part, because I'm going to put my own amateur "lawyer" hat on.  First of all... since when does a telegram become a legally binding document?  And why in the world does the mouse hang on to it?  I mean, besides for protection?  The cat didn't think to steal it for himself?  That's just stupid.  I mean, cat plus telegram equals... something.  That's just math.  I know, I know... I'm just not thinking in terms of plot.  And second... if this is a legally binding document, how does the disbursal of funds work, exactly?  Same thing happened to Yosemite Sam in... let me look it up... From Hare to Heir.  And here it is on the YouTubes!  Go figure.  They have to gussy it all up with extras, of course.  That all ends when Rupert Murdoch buys TimeWarner, of course.  And he can do it, too.  He's got clout!  HELLA clout.... what was I saying?  Oh, right.  In Hare/Heir, Bugs moves in with Sam and does much the same routine, pissing off Sam to no end, and Bugs has the right to deduct from the million pound total as he sees fit.  Oh, and he sees fit, all right!  In The Million Dollar Cat, apparently Tom can spend as much of the money as he wants up until the moment of truth... that's what he gets for not investing, like John Candy tried to do for Richard Pryor in Brewster's Millions.  I wonder if he'd lose all that too?  Personally, I'm in favor of secrecy clauses.  We need more people acting weird in front of their friends for reasons that they are legally bound to not disclose.  How else are our new surveillor Overlords at the NSA going to have any fun?  How else are we going to have dumb movie plots?
So, for me, Tom's a hero for damning the devil's deal and giving the mouse his comeuppance... sort of.  The mouse is very strong and fast, and can only get hit by the cat when the plot allows it.  Alas, Tom didn't lawyer up like Bill Gates or Howard Stern.  The Fisher King?  Puh-leeze.  Jack Lucas was an amateur.  He should've stuck with the physiological rung of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs like Howard does, which is partly why I'm still pissed off at Howard for giving Tina Fey a pass on the toilet questions!  Does she listen to the show?  Does she?... did I do my riff on Zeno's Paradox yet?  I'll just stick with the Dichotomy Paradox, because I'm no mathematician.  See, it seems like a grammatical problem to me.  Here's the Dichotomy Paradox, according to the gospel of Wikipedia: "Suppose Homer wants to catch a stationary bus. Before he can get there, he must get halfway there. Before he can get halfway there, he must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a quarter, he must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on."  See, this Homer's a chump, and needs a good lawyer, who would change it to "Suppose Homer wants to catch a stationary bus. Before he can get there, he must get halfway there... then, he must get the other half of the way there."  Problem solved?  I think so.  I may be the only one on the web who does, but so be it.

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

You know we're getting Hotter and Hotter, Sweeter and Hotter - Let's shut it down!

Our next Stooge film is called Sweet and Hot, and it's basically 16 minutes of the Stooges enjoying some Chinese food... I'm sorry, actually it's one of those weird ones where they don't play their usual selves.  Even the Stooges get tired of playing the Stooges all the time!  Wheeler and Woolsey, not so much.  Yes, like Sylvester Stallone in Driven, the Stooges realize that they're no spring chickens anymore, and that maybe mentoring's not such a bad thing.  Of course, Sly still thinks of himself as the senior in high school rather than the aging principal.  The mentoree?  A plus-sized farm gal with the voice of Susan Boyle.  She's played by... let me check IMDb here... Muriel Landers, star of stage and screen, who also appeared in Stooge director Jules White's previous Tricky Chicks, from which some footage was apparently clipped to reuse here.
Now I understand the Stooge fan's complaints, Joe Besser aside.  The Stooge formula is actually a rigid one, so when they depart from it, typically by playing characters slightly other than their usual selves, it can be a bit unsettling.  But when you're sitting through all 190 of them, your perspective might change a little bit.  Just think of it as a poke in the chops of all those high-falutin' Hollywood musicals that fill peoples' heads with all sorts of false promises and unattainable goals.  Why, even you might be the next Cary Grant or Marilyn Monroe, no matter how untalented or Morluk-like you are.  All the American Dream asks of you is a little ambition and elbow grease!
And so, we find ourselves on a family farm, where 'Tiny' Landers whistles while she works, as do all the barnyard animals.  Some of these animals look like they're also imported film clips from other movies, but who can say.  Even I'm not that much of a student of Cannery Row.  Larry plays a hometown boy who made it big in the big city as an entertainer.  Go figure.  He comes back to find Joe and Tiny stuck in their same agrarian rut.  Larry tries to convince them that showbiz is the way to go.  Maybe it's just me, but you don't see this sales pitch so much in modern televised or filmed dramas anymore.  Frankly, there's too many people in showbiz these days, and not enough people helping out on the farm.  And even if you were to see this sales pitch being made to someone, they would of course have to ultimately refuse.  No, no, my meager lot in life is all I need.  That and the love of my Vogue model partner is all I could ask.  So bear in mind that this film was made in the late 1950s and social mobility was still an achievable goal back then.
Anyway, back to Larry's sales pitch.  He tries to sell the virtues of New York to Joe and Tiny.  Nothing about New York sounds terribly appealing to them... except the food.  Glorious food!  Hot sausage and mustard!  At long last, someone else will do the cooking!  They're sold.  Off to show business they go.  But there's one problem... 'Tiny's crippling stage fright.  Well, Larry knows a good head shrinker that will fix her right up.  That oughta eat up some time!
Next scene: the big city, and the offices of Hugo Gansamacher M.D., played by none other than Moe Howard.  As Wikipedia rightly points out, Moe dons his German accent for this character work.  Again, even Moe gets tired of playing the same old Moe over and over again.  To cut to the chase, Moe talks to Tiny in her sleep to discover that her abusive father (played by Moe) is the cause of her crippling stage fright.  Mel Brooks stole this idea for his High Anxiety, obviously.
And so, with her stage fright cured, Tiny goes on to wow a small audience at an upper-class dinner theater someplace.  And why look!  Here come Joe on newspaper and Lawrence on violin to help her out!  The show is a sensation!  Then again, the number she sings is something apparently titled "The Heat is On," a gentle reminder that girls just wanna have som fun sometimes, too.  Of course, if you're part of my generation, there's only one "The Heat is On," damn it.  And sure, it's as forgettable a number as the one in this Stooge film, but it's our forgettable number, damn it.  Ours.... yecch, what a terrible music video.
...what else?  I must be forgetting something.  Oh, okay.  Here's one for the Creepy Police.  After the success of their show, Tiny's just gotta kiss someone.  In this case, it's Uncle Larry.  Ewwwwwwwww!  And on the mouth, no less!  And on a lesser note, we end with Moe Freud saying that there's nothing to fear but fear itself... and maybe mice.  I always thought that that FDR line was bulls... B.S.  Still, a nice slogan when gearing up for war.  As for my collection of Stooge sound effects, that overused "Oof!" sound is used here, so there's another one to add to the pile.  The master list is in here somewhere.
Sweet and Hot's script is credited to Jerome S. Gottler who, once upon a time, worked on the script for the very first Stooge short, Woman Haters.  Ah, that takes me back.  Apparently he's a song-and-dance man, so perhaps he's responsible for the musical numbers in Sweet and Hot.  Interesting bookends to a Hollywood career, these two Stooge films.

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

At the Corner of Ford and Sexism

Our next Popeye short is called... hoh boy.  It's called Wimmin Hadn't Oughta Drive.  I know, I know... such atrocious spelling.  The Popeye shorts didn't start out this way! ... I stand corrected.  Oh, and they were way way more politically incorrect.
But let's dive right into the plot.  Things have changed a lot since the days of The Spinach Roadster.  The novelty of owning a car, any piece of.... junk car has grown commonplace.  Now it's a matter of having the latest and greatest.  Popeye now has a slick-looking car, not as long as the one that Bluto had in Roadster, but with a similar exterior.  The engine, however, is one that he probably feels at home with: it sits in a bath of fluid!  And so, he picks up Olive and they head off for a drive.
Now, as with all these Popeye shorts, the main characters start off with a blank slate.  Olive's driven before, but she doesn't seem to know it here.  She wants her turn at the wheel, and resorts to ultimatums to get her way.  Being a gentleman, Popeye naturally gives in to Olive's wishes and she takes over.
She has a little trouble at first.  It's a stick shift, so that takes some getting used to.  I tell you one thing, she did a lot better than I ever did with a stick shift!  God, I hate those things.  Isn't driving hard enough as it is?  Maybe I'm a philistine for thinking so, but so be it.
Next challenge: turning the car.  Popeye's got the teacher attitude, but he's really just a bad teacher.  He tells Olive that when you turn, "You put your hand out!"  After the crash, Olive helpfully says "I put my hand out, but the car didn't turn!"  Popeye's also not terribly good at impending tragedies.  Look how he handles this one!  Eventually, he takes matters into his own hands, especially when he turns the body of the car around.
As you can imagine, things get out of hand quickly.  Popeye has to jump out of the car to lift up a policeman directing traffic as Olive drives by.  See, he says "Give me the wheel" and... oh, never mind.  Anyhow, I think this is a first: here, Popeye takes out his can of spinach, but doesn't eat it right away.  Olive's headed up a dangerous mountain road at this point in the film.  Popeye has enough strength to run ahead of the car, but apparently not enough to stop it.  So, spoiler alert: Popeye gets to the very tip-top edge of the road and, just before Olive's about to drive right off the mountain, Popeye eats the spinach and instantly turns into a giant rock that stops the car when the car lightly crashes into it.  Just remember, kids: procrastination is bad... but it can also be quite cinematic.
As for the ending, well... Wimmin Hadn't Oughta Drive was made in 1940.  America hadn't entered into World War II left, and I think nice cars were still a luxury item at this point, so the masses always liked to see movie stars getting into car wrecks, and even when it was on the silver screen, too!  As for Popeye cartoons, the template was set.  Note the endings of Taxi-Turvy (1954) and Car-azy Drivers (1955).  All three involve a close-up shot, then pulling back to a wider shot, showing how Popeye and Olive opt for less technologically dangerous means of travel.  A classic... I guess.

Good triple bill with: Car-azy Drivers and Taxi-Turvy

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Jim Brown

Yes, Jim Brown.  Director extraordinaire of scads of documentary films on only the worthiest of subjects: Pete Seeger; Peter, Paul and Mary; Harold Leventhal, the list goes on and on... actually, the list is a little less than finite.  So with such a magnificent body of work, surely it falls to someone else to do the Jim Brown story?  Ken Burns?  Ross McElwee?  Well, not Ross.  He's still working through his own issues.  I mean, Jim would do it himself, but no.  He's no narcissist.  Even he knows his story's not that compelling.  He'd probably tell you it's just a job like any job.  He might as well be working the deep fryer at McDonald's for all he cares.  You turn on a camera, and you put something interesting in front of it.  That's the job.  If it's interesting for you, all the better.  It's a reward in itself... and it'll have to be, since national recognition seems to elude him, even to this day.

The French, They Are a Profitable Race or No, No Threats, No No Fights...

[Sunday proper] ...is it just me, or are all these movie posters using the same graded shade of blue?  Well, we got four debuts this week.  For some reason, people weren't as excited to rehash the boring old adventures of the new Hercules as they were to see ScarJo's latest, called Lucy.  Yes, it's Luc Besson's latest variation on La Femme Nikita and... and my internet's slow right now, so I have yet to determine if Besson has officially split up with Robert Mark Kamen or not.  Let's hope those two patch things up, as no one else in Hollywood wants to work with that guy.  You know, people think that everyone in Hollywood knows each other.  Not true!  Why, Hollywood is as divided up into regimented partitions as the rest of society, maybe even more so.  But instead of promotions and pay raises, it's all about which parties you get invited to.  And you'd better dress up nice, or you're out.  Out with yesteryear's moldy old scripts.
Anyway, Hercules came in second.  I guess Brett Ratner didn't want to have his name mentioned in the TV ads or something.  It's kind of a jinx, even though Ratner is a modern day Hercules of sorts.  Oh, he can hold his own in the Douchebag Trenches, even at his age, I can tell ya!  Another debut this week is music video director turned film director Anton Corbijn's latest effort called A Most Wanted Man, one of the five or six last films of Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Boy!  Even now that he's passed on, the guy's still not getting any rest!  And finally, a movie I haven't seen any ads for: it's Rob Reiner's latest, called And So It Goes.  Well, he hasn't given up on directing yet like father Carl seems to have.  Maybe this will do it.
[before Sunday] Well, I assume the Transformers movie is still hanging in there.  Well, that irresistible combination of Mark Wahlberg and the giant robots is nothing short of breathtaking.  One is the latest hottest digital model rendered with the latest incarnation of Renderman... and the other is the Transformers.  Drumroll please!  But competition is indeed upon the horizon.  You got Guardians of the Galaxy coming up, Luc Besson's latest (which he actually directed this time!) and director Tate Taylor's latest non-boring period piece called Get On Up.

DIY - Zoot Suit Edition

Ah, the dual temporal nature of courtship.  Romance is older than Heloise and Abelard... but there's also the need to keep up on current trends.  That's the cat's dilemma here in The Zoot Cat, our next Tom and Jerry cartoon.  It must be a good one because cartoon historian Jerry Beck does a commentary for it on the DVD.  It's essentially a one act play that takes place at the girl cat's house, except for the brief introductory scene where Tom's preparing a package to take to his girl cat.
Spoiler alert: all that grooming for nothing!  He curls his whiskers, for God's sake!  And strums a ukulele!  You know, just like on that awful song by Train!  The girl is summarily unimpressed and tells Tom and his "rat" to take a hike.  A mighty chase ensues on the girl cat's porch.  Lucky for the cats, the humans are out for the day.  On his way away, Tom hears the radio.  He peeks in the window and watches as the girl cat listens to the radio... well, it was a different era, and guys were allowed to be creepier than today.
There's an ad on the radio for a zoot suit.  Chicks dug them at the time.  Fortunately for the cash-strapped Tom, he already knows how to make one!  Go figure.  He manages to steal the girl cat's lampshade, and turns it into a hat, and the hammock on the porch becomes the source of fabric for his zoot suit.  Tom also manages to find a clothes hanger to give him wider shoulders.  After a few furious seconds of stitching and cutting, the suit is ready and Tom is dressed to impress.
Now for the final test.  The girl cat opens the door a second time, and boom!  It worked!  Time to dance!  Jerry the mouse is also quite impressed by Tom's new duds.  Why, you might say they have... no, I won't go there today.  But Jerry Mouse finds himself cutting in on the dancing.  I don't get how the girl cats in these things seem to prefer the mouse to the cat.  They never get around to eating the mouse, anyway.  Tom's caught up in the adrenaline-fueled frenzy, but he does manage to be affronted by the mouse's intrusion, which takes precedence over pitching woo in this picture.
As usual, the mouse gets the better of the cat and... we go back to the girl cat dancing with the mouse!  What's up with that?  Oh, and there's a piano number, where the cat plays the piano, and the girl cat sits and swoons.  Only one way to break that up... yup, you guessed it, the old hot foot routine.  Because this is a Tom and Jerry cartoon, the number of matches well exceeds the required amount for a hot foot.
The finale is reminiscent to me of another Tom and Jerry cartoon where the mouse gets ahold of some strength vitamins... but we'll save that for later, if it's on the DVD, anyway.  Anyway, Tom ends up getting caught on one of those comedy curtains, snaps back and gets dunked in the goldfish bowl twice.  This causes his suit to shrink... and shrink... and shrink.  Will Tom be choked to death by his makeshift zoot suit?  Hoisted on his own petard, as it were?  Spoiler alert: no, the suit snaps off.  It's very tiny now, and it slowly floats down to the ground... hmm!  Why, you might even say it's mouse-sized now!  GENIUS!  The little rat steals the suit, puts it on and sashays off into the proverbial sunset, as it were... meh!

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Oh, a Pies Guy, eh?

Our next Stooge short is called Pies and Guys, a reworking of the plot elements and actual footage from Half-Wits Holiday.  And once again, a couple of Ivory Tower professors have a spirited debate about the major factor that leads to success in high society: environment or heredity.  Of course, these days these sorts of debates don't seem as public anymore.  Now the upper one percent just seems concerned about tax breaks, both privately and publicly.  Actually, not just tax breaks, but completely dismantling the government so that there's no taxes to get a break from to begin with.  And to them I say: guys, just think of it all as Angry Mob Insurance.  One of your handmaidens appeared on Bill Maher's Real Time once and said that that's the nightmare: you're sitting there in your nice, safe gated community one night, when here comes an angry mob with torches and pitchforks and, worst of all, grievances.  Where's that 401K that vanished?  Where's the dental plans that seem to be separate from the rest of my health care coverage?  What about weekends?  And this is past the point of shaming.  It's time to draw some blue blood.  I guess you can only do so much until people get mad.  The veterans understand this.  "Oh, I guess you need a functioning, Legionnaires Disease-free Walter Reed Hospital... if you're a pussy!!!" or "Oh, I guess you need prosthetic arms and legs... if you're a pussy!!!!!"
It's all about walking that fine line of when pussies turn into straw dogs, but I think I got off topic a little bit.  The point was that Joe Besser tries to ruin another Curly classic.  Under Joe's thumb, every punchline gets drained of its potency, and becoming gentlemen is now a good thing.  In Half-Wits Holiday, the Stooges hang their heads in shame when they accept the wager, and when the thousand dollar wager is first offered, Moe asks "Who do we have to murder?"  Too dangerous a line for the tepid Besser, apparently.  But there's at least one improvement on the original: the "oof" sound when Gene Roth gets hit in the stomach with a sledgehammer.

length of Pies and Guys: 16m28s
without old footage: 14m4s

percentage of new footage: 85.4%

**1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

To Dream the Impossikible Dream

I forgot to call Fightin' Pals a bromance, didn't I?  Anyway, it's back to the same old same old for these Fleischer Popeye cartoons.  They've traded top-notch production values for wacky, misspelled title credits, and Popeye is reduced to peddling his wares to two-bit directors who seem to make it a point to never miss meals.
Yes, despite promise in the title, Doing Impossikible Stunts is, in fact, another one of those stitching-together-of-old-Popeye-clips type of deals!  Something that the Stooges never tried to do.  No, the Stooges just jump headlong into their old scripts, after giving them a few new twists, and then the editors go to work, furiously trying to slap together that uneasy combination of old clips and new.  As for our current Popeye cartoon, well, we see Popeye and Sweet Pea walking along.  Popeye's got a demo reel under his arm of his stunt work.  Yes, despite his near-superhero powers thanks to spinach, he's gotta hustle for a buck and a dime along with everyone else in Hollywood.  Popeye apparently doesn't realize he's being followed, but once he does, he pooh-poohs Swee'Pea's own dreams of being a top shelf Hollywood stunt person.  I must be getting more jaded as time marches on, but I figured out what the punchline was going to be.  Of course, I think I saw this a long time ago anyway, so that also helped.  It's a testament to Popeye's faith in Sweet Pea, however, that he just tells Swee'Pea to go on home by himself rather than take him back home himself.  Oh, he's a tough kid when you get right down to it!
And so, Popeye arrives at the office with a projector in it to peddle his wares.  Like the rest of us, the director's impressed (but in that phony-baloney Hollywood way, which the rest of America is slowly catching up to thanks to YouTube and the like) ... but do you have anything fresh and new, Popeye?  Do you have film of a cute cat playing the piano?  Oh, right... stunt work.  Do you have any cutting edge-type stuff here, man?  Barnstorming and stunt dives are old hat, man.  Anyway, it's at that critical juncture when the ever resourceful Sweet Pea hands Popeye his own reel of stunt stuff.  Sure, it's just a rehash of Lost and Foundry, but still.  Take that, Jackass!
And so, Sweet Pea gets to sign on the dotted line instead of Popeye.  Take that, old man!  Even the iris out disses Popeye... you know, that circle effect?  Instead of a fade-out, one of those circles leaves a black background behind it, and Popeye gets stuck in the black void between the end of the cartoon and the Paramount logo.  A lonelier place he will not find.  As for me, I don't feel like going back and checking on all of them, but I know the end of Bridge Ahoy! has different music and voices for sure.  The Fleischers may reuse old film clips, but they always do fresh music and voices for them... maybe not for Olive, but again, I don't feel like checking.
Oh, yeah, almost forgot.  They use Disney's sound effect here.  Why, Disney oughta get the copyright lawyer's on someone's asses over that!

length of cartoon: 7m 12s
without old footage: 3m 38s

50% NEW FOOTAGE!!!!!!!!!

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - G. S. Brown

That's Georg Stanford Brown to you, honky!  Yes, with our perpetual love for '70s TV shows, where's the love for Mr. Brown here?  Mannix!  The Rookies!  Roots... we still like Roots, right?  It hasn't been remade yet... has it?  Well, my stupid new software program wasn't able to find a connection between him and Spielberg, but this is pretty close: one of his last directorial efforts was The Reading Room, starring no one less than the voice of Darth Vader, the talented and insistent Republican James Earl Jones.  That's... pretty close, right?  Of course, the dude's over 80 years old, so you might have to shout in his ear a bit.

Fiscal Solvency of the Planet of the Apes

Now THIS is how you know a film's made it.  Sure, there's Lebowski Fest and all that, but to have a quote on the IMDb's 404 Error page?  I've actually just seen it for the first time tonight!  Usually I'm too busy browsing around, and not trying to type in my own new links.  Anyway, there's a lot of new movies out there on that horizon.  You got your Boyhood on one end of the spectrum, a film that took 12 years to shoot.  Then there's Sex Tape, the latest from Jason Segel and Lawrence Kasdan's kid.  Plus, there's probably some superhero movies on the horizon... oh, right.  That one with the raccoon called Guardians of the Galaxy.  Probably another hit for Marvel, I'm guessing.  Even Motley Fool can see that.

(Sunday) No, Guardians is still about 2 weeks off.  Meantime, Apes is top banana this weekend.  Apparently, people got tired of seeing giant robots beat each other up, so let's see some digital apes beat people up instead.  At #2, The Purge: Anarchy reigns supreme.  For those who couldn't take the digital apes, they went to see people beat up other people.  Creepy!  Well, from an anthropological perspective, I think it speaks well about us that these Purge movies are doing way better than these Human Centipede movies.  I hope that series is finally over.  At #3, it's the continued decline of Pixar's hegemony with a sequel to a film that no one cared about, and it's called Planes, Trains & Automobiles... I mean, Planes: Fire and Rescue.  Oh, Dane... Jimmy Kimmel's about this close to turning his back on you completely.  You were Tank, for God's sake!  TANK!  Now you're doing kid's movies!  I mean, how cool can Planes 2 be if Dane Cook came back to play the hunky older lead, Flint Brickman?  I mean, Dusty Crophopper?... seriously?  Dusty Crophopper?  Fortunately, that will also sub as a porn name when the Chinese start making porno versions of our beloved Pixar classics.  Oh, it's out there, people.  It's still the fringes, but once the smog clears in China, there's no telling what that sleeping giant will come up with.
The other debut this week is Sex Tape, or Bad Teacher 2, the same filmmaking team of Cameron Diaz, Lawrence Kasdan's kid and Jason Segel spitting out their latest shockfest.  My God!  Kasdan and Segel have been working together now for 15 years!  Where does the time go?  Oh well.  Jake's still doing better than his dad lately.  Oh sure, Lawrence apparently is hard at work on the script for the next Star Wars movie, but really, how hard will that be to screw up?  Besides, is Lawrence Kasdan good enough for J. J. Abrams?  If you're working for Abrams, you gotta have layers, man.  Lots and lots of layers.  Layers is a young man's game, my old friend.

How to Nurse an American Cat

Well, the DVD's in there already, so why don't we just get it the hell over with?
...ah, I remember parts of this one.  These were in the old days when Cartoon Network used to show old cartoons.  Now it's all anime and Genndy Tartakovsky's stuff.  But once upon a time it was MGM and WB, and I must've liked this one a lot because I recall fondly the Spanish / Mexican song sung in it, and the wind instruments at the end filling in for the laughter of Jerry the Mouse.
Anyway, here's the setup.  Just as Tom the cat was torturing the mouse in our last cartoon, Sufferin' Cats!, now it's Tom's turn to be tortured by a little girl playing dress-up with the cat.  And, as with all Tom and Jerry cartoons, you can't see the faces of the people... just like the teacher in E.T.  Good cinematic convention!  And so we go through the proverbial Kübler-Ross stages of grief, but as an animal Tom is in no position to bargain, so we're basically stuck in the depression phase, with a little anger mixed in for good measure.  However, when the milk arrives, things change.  Depression and anger eventually give way to acceptance: sweet, milky acceptance.
And frankly... it gets a little creepy!  Thank god Jerry the Mouse shows up!  Jerry can't believe it at first, and I mean really can't believe it, slapping his face a couple times to make sure he's not dreaming.  Lol.  Now, some say revenge is a dish best served cold.  But then again, these days everyone's a comedian and everyone's got a blog for fighting the Phrases of Old handed down by our stupid, unquestioning elders.  Take "dog eat dog," for example.  That must've been one hungry dog!  And why do we still call things "mainstream" anymore?  The Mississippi River barely exists anymore!  But back to the instant case.  While Jerry's not exactly seeking revenge yet, Jerry proves that imitation isn't always the sincerest form of flattery.  There's another one of those phrases.  Jerry turns on the record player; fortunately for him, "Rock-a-Bye Baby" is already on there.  The music blares and Jerry starts crying like a baby.  Tom is instantly ripped from his state of nirvana, and a mighty chase ensues.
Now, normally these episodes come in threes, but the right two will have to do.  The girl comes back in and puts Tom back into the crib, etc. etc.  It's a white girl, so I'm assuming it's the same voice from the '40s.  And so, Tom's back on the bottle, and now happy to play the baby to the young girl's domineering mother figure.  Time for Jerry's Second Act.  Fortunately, Jerry doesn't have to go too far, but Jerry lures some of the neighborhood cats in to check out Tom.  Tom gets furious, but it's three against one... maybe two and a half against one, but he's still outnumbered.  These new cats need to have some fun with this be-diapered guy.
Now, it's been a while, but some of you might know that I'm just a sucker for a good audio clip.  Not like I used to be, of course, now that they're more at my fingertips than ever.  Still, I'm always on the lookout for one I may have missed, and here's one right here.  What can I say?  I am a bit of a sadist.  Fortunately for Tom and unfortunately for the rest of us, the girl comes back.  The other cats run away, and Tom gets all the blame as usual.  No time to hunt down the other cats, I guess.  Is no one going to demand justice for poor ol' Tom?  Apparently not, and so it's time for the dreaded castor oil.  Without the little girl ever knowing, Jerry helps Tom open his mouth to take the dreaded medicine.  Apparently, the filmmakers felt that this snarky act needed to go punished, so gravity ends up giving the mouse some of the oil as well.  We end with both cat and mouse vomiting out of a windowsill.  A fine ending to a fine Tom and Jerry cartoon.  Four stars.
Oh, I forgot to mention.  I should be more freaked out because I just watched Quiz Whizz where the Stooges found themselves in a similar age-defying predicament... but for some reason, I'm not.  Call the Creepy Police!  Lock my ass up forever!  It's the least I deserve.

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan