Dear Little Pup........

ACT ONE

Our next Tom and Jerry short is called Slicked-Up Pup, and it would seem that it's all about the pride of parenthood... but more specifically, fatherhood.  Now I don't recall the cat ever having sired a child for one of these pics... which isn't too surprising, given the kinds of injuries he sustains throughout these things.  No, the duties of fatherhood go to Butch/Spike, the bulldog.  We don't know who he's voiced by this time, and it doesn't sound like Billy Bletcher, because I don't think he ever did a James Durante impression.  And I'm pretty sure it's not Durante himself, as he'd insist on billing, probably top, and he'd probably want to do at least two piano numbers.
Now I'm going to warn my more squeamish readers up front here.  No Mrs. Bulldog is shown in this picture... come to think of it, has there ever been one in any of these?  That's right, folks... Butch / Spike is a SINGLE FATHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Alternative lifestyle!!!  Mao-Mao Indoctrination!!  So if you're susceptible to that kind of thing, turn away from this review now and gather your religious artifacts near.  As for the rest of us... let's press on!
Of course, Slicked-Up Pup is an equal opportunity offender.  After dad bulldog finishes giving junior bulldog a bath, he tells junior that he's going to the big city to get a couple of "chops."  And I don't think he means the kind made of pressed lentils and barley.  Anyway, off goes papa bulldog.  That is until...
Enter the mouse and cat.  The mouse instinctively heads towards the plot, and dives into a teeny mouse-sized hole in the porch.  The cat just misses the mouse, but slides into the bulldog pup, eventually pushing the poor little pup into a big pool of mud at the end of the porch, which of course makes a loud raspberry sound.  Well, what do you expect?  After all, these things can't burp, can they?
Papa bulldog comes over to assess the damage.  His once clean pup is now a muddy mess.  "CLEAN HIM UP!" orders the bulldog.  Oh, and the papa bulldog uses the long reach to grab the cat from off camera... much like in Quiet Please!  Tom instantly returns with a completely clean pup.  No, the reverse side of the pup has no dirt on it, which is kind of a shame because that would have been a funny gag.  Once the pup is returned and passes the smell test, the edict is issued, much like in Quiet Please!  It is simply this: the pup is now clean, and it better stay clean while papa bulldog is gone for a bintel brief.  "UNDERSTAND?" the dog asks the cat.  The cat nods.  The mouse also nods, much like in Quiet Please!  I'm not saying there are parallels here, but... oh, and the dog growls before leaving, just for good measure.  Nice touch!

ACT TWO

And so, Jerry's typical game of arbitrage begins.  But before that happens, Tom has a little trouble managing the pup all by himself.  He ends up making another mud raspberry, but the cat bears the brunt of this one.  Here's something all you screenwriters should take note of: the still muddy Tom sets down the pup, then makes the "Whew!" gesture... and gets a little mud on the pup's face.  Tom springs into action and cleans it off quick.  Ah, the era before all these surveillance devices.  Jerry finds all this terribly amusing and starts laughing, but it sounds a bit like a violin.  You know, like the sequence in Duck Soup with Harpo's various horns.  You know, I'd be lost without a telephone.
And so, time for Jerry's first trick.  Jerry calls Tom to a halt, which of course Tom obeys.  Why, you ask?  Uh, because they're gentlemen!  I mean, they're animals, of course, but they're not animals, after all!  Animals don't tell each other to halt!  If you're a wildebeest, do you ask the lion to not eat you?  You run!  That's what you do!  Because you're a freakin' WILDEBEEST!
...as you can see, I'm still just trying to figure out a lot of this stuff myself.  And so, Jerry gets Tom to halt, and challenges Tom to a game of tic tac toe.  Tom wins the round, then takes off after the mouse... only to realize he's lost the game of life once again.  Yup, the game of tic tac toe has been etched upon the pup's skin in pencil.  Tom quickly removes the stain from the pup, but the stain on Tom and Jerry's tenuous peace remains.
Jerry's next deviant act: chucking a Victory Garden tomato at Tom.  Tom of course ducks out of the tomato's way, then realizes what Jerry's actually up to.  Tom is fortunately able to outrun the tomato, which ends up hitting Tom in the face, making a tomato raspberry... boy, I don't know about you, but when was the last time you've seen a tomato that gooey?  Must've been spoiled or something.  I mean, when they're ripe, the various fleshy pockets holding in the gooey collections of seeds have a certain degree of structural integrity... ah, skip it.  On to the next outrage.
...did they just reuse the chase footage from earlier?  Oh, dude... talk about outrage!!!  Well, they had better make up for it somehow.

ACT THREE

It's a bit premature for the Third Act, but I'll justify my reasoning in this way: it's the beginning of the end.  Ever have a nightmare where you're running from the police, and you wake up relieved?  You know, kinda like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day at one point?  Well, unfortunately for our cat friend, whom we've shared so many adventures with, this particular film will provide him with little comfort from here on in.
It all starts with the threat from a bottle of ink.  Jerry now holds a bottle of ink over the poor sleeping pup.  Any time a cartoon character wields the ingredients of their making, well... one can't help but take a breath and a step back.  As in Quiet Please... sorry, but they're very simular!... Tom knows that he's beat and retreats with such a fake smile it's not even funny.  Soooooo fake.
And so, Tom ends up cutting off Jerry at the pass, so to speak, and gets the bottle of ink under his control.  With the mouse now gone, Tom places the bottle of ink in a safe so that it can never be unleashed again on this pup or any pup ever again, without some serious safecracking first... ah, just messing with ya.  Tom throws the bottle up into the air without even looking.  Why, Tom's so cool, he doesn't even hear all the strange rattling and rolling noises!
And then... the nightmare unleashed from the inkwell.  Yup, the ink's all over the pup.  Somehow no amount of soap or water will wash it off.  Tom tries to carefully blot the ink up, but this solution doesn't provide a rapid enough pace for Tom's tastes.  Are we in fact dealing with a crisis of tampering with the pup's genetic structure?  Is Jerry going to find an eraser as we speak?  Frantic beyond the norm, Tom turns to a series of paint buckets, and starts painting the pup the right color.  But Tom isn't watching where his brush is going, and the ever-strong, ever-devious Jerry slowly pushes the paint bucket bench so that the pup becomes a tie-dye masterpiece, thereby creating the 60s.  Of course, when people say the 60s, they mean 1966 to 1969... oh, shorter than even that, apparently.  Never mind.  Yeah, that election of '68 was as big a bummer as it gets, no question about it.
Jerry's next sneaky act: exasperated, Tom finally goes for the water hose.  So what does Jerry do?  Why, he hooks up the hose to the spigot on the giant barrel of tar, of course!  What home in post-WWII was complete without it?  You know, for all your roof-related emergencies!  Really keeps the ol' rainwater out.  And so, the pup ends up with nine plops of tar upon its body.  Its eyes are okay, of course, as it opens its eyes after the barrage is over.  Tom ends up with only one plop of tar on his face.  Cue the dad bulldog!
Acting quickly, Tom quickly feathers the tarred pup, puts a glove on its head and a clothespin on its nose and pretends that it's a baby chicken.  "WHERE'S MY BOY?" Butch / Spike asks Tom.  Tom plays dumb.  The ruse works... except that the disguised pup makes some teeny tiny barking noises.  Tom is forced to double down on the ruse and makes the clucking noises himself, and moves the tarred and feathered pup around as though it were pecking at corn on the ground.  The chopless bulldog dad walks away satisfied.  Alas, it's a temporary reprieve, as the bulldog pup removes its clothespin and takes a nice big bite on the cat's tail.  I don't know why Tom would scream at that, after all the times that Jerry has tied Tom's tail to things, usually trucks that are about to take off.
Needles to say, that's all the proof the bulldog dad needs, and off the chase goes.

EPILOGUE

Tom makes his way over to the washing machine and prepares to put the inked and painted and tarred and feathered and generally be-chickened bulldog pup within to clean it up... but alas, it's too late.  Bulldog dad's already there, watching what's going on.  Tom hands over the pup, but it's a Brest-Litovsk type move.  There will be World War II anyway.  The inked, painted, tarred, feathered, generally be-chickened pup sneezes, and all bets are off.  Bulldog dad puts the cat into the washing machine with extra soap, and we're all treated to a little glimpse of the real Cat Hell: being trapped in a washing machine, bumping around, soap and water everywhere.  And this is one of those special deluxe models for the homemaker with a glass front, so you can see your clothes getting washed!  You know, for all those "show-me" types in Missouri.  State motto, after all!  The mouse joins in on the fun, of course.  These dogs never seem to get mad at that little bastard of a mouse.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Citron Tide

Our next Popeye short takes us back to the shipyard after the stopover at the corner of Four Brats and Spinach.  We haven't seen Olive in a while, but I seem to recall four weeks ago seeing her Bolivian counterpart, Olivita... something like that.  Too lazy to look it up.  Anyway, the promise of Olive is inherent in the slightly misogynist title, Olive Oyl and Water Don't Mix.  Why, she's an excellent swimmer!... isn't she?

ACT ONE

Oh, and I failed to notice that Jack Mercer, the voice of Popeye for about some 40 odd years, also gets story credit for this... whew!  Just his second credit.  ...Eggs Don't Bounce!  Love it!  Title par excellence.  Anyway, he gets story credit for eight total of the shorts I'm going to look at.  That's all I need to know.
Anyway, Bluto tries a new tactic on Popeye... or does he?  Bluto's complaining about dames in general, and about not being able to stand on streetcorners smoking cigars in particular... oh, wait, he's not.  I was just having a flashback to Wotta Nitemare.  See, he doesn't realize that he's nothing but trouble.  But you know how it is.  It's all the dame's fault.  From Eve on.  Still, no mention of Olive in this conversation!  What male whores!  And so, in this moment of fraternity and weakness, Bluto and Popeye agree to "never have nuttin' to do with dames no more"... something like that.  Hands are shaked.  But just before that, Olive comes aboard the ship.  How instantly do you think all that goes out the window?  ...about five seconds?  LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!  I must be in a good mood tonight.
Well, the official Olive Oyl and Water Don't Mix page got that right, but we still don't know who the voice of Bluto is this time.  Why, he sounds like a cornfed hick, for God's sake!  The Fleischers seemed to have trouble retaining vocal talent... probably because they never get any CREDIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Oh well.  Live and learn, as Alanis Morrisette taught us all.  And... yup!  Handshake at 1:17, and then about 1:22, the two spot Olive... I mean, the gruesome twosome notice that Olive's talking to them.  She asks "Which one of you boys wants to show me around the ship?"  "Why, at your soivice, lady!" coos Bluto.  I guess these anti-women pledges are easier to form in the absence of women.
This is probably a good place to go to Act Two, but there's still the initial dispute to settle.  Only one of these alpha males ... sorry, I mean α males is going to escort the lady around the big ol' battleship.  For a brief moment, Bluto and Popeye have their faces and hats mashed together, and their hats look like one hat.  Lol.  Eventually, Bluto decides to spin Olive like a bottle on the main deck... you know, in a "gentlemanly" manner.  That oughta eat up a little time!  To Bluto's dismay, however, she ends up pointing at Popeye.  Bluto fixes that, though... I hate to spoil it, but I must admit that I like the way the result was animated.  Must've been rotoscoped.

ACT TWO

And so, Bluto starts the process of showing Olive around the ship.  But before that happens, the difference between the sexes already creates a conflict.  Olive assumes that the ship caters to her interests, and mistakes the door labeled "Powder Room" for where she can do a couple lines of... I mean, adjust her makeup.  Alas, Bluto quickly stops her from going in.  We're saving the big explosion for the Third Act.  Bluto demonstrates the spotlight with giant Venetian blinds in front of it for signaling... screw the actual term for that.  It's either "giant Venetian blinds" or it's a cucaloris.  I don't care what the Navy calls it... okay, Bluto calls it the "signal light blinker."  Left the closed-captioning on; too lazy to turn it off.
Meanwhile, Popeye views all this action from afar.  He must intervene before Bluto gets to second base.  Welp, all Popeye's "training" from the previous navy-themed films must have paid off, because Popeye lets himself into the gun room, and he starts moving the cannons in a way that brings Olive up to his level on one of the upper decks.  Bluto looks around and, even though he didn't see what happened, he knows right away that "that shiftless little runt" Popeye is behind this turn of events... sorry, that's "chiseling", not "shiftless".  Double-checked the closed captioning.  Take that, YouTube!
Next scene: ...you know, it's not often that Bluto is able to turn Popeye's superhuman strength against him, especially during the big fight at the end, so here's something a little different.  Popeye shows the ship's propellors to Olive... by lifting the front of the ship up and bending it in half.  And by God, there they are.  Two propellors.  A sight to behold.  Popeye blows on the propellors and they spin round.  And then... after Bluto has climbed into the engine room up near the crow's nest, Bluto turns them on.  A mighty gust of wind pins Popeye to the wall (...the closed captioning doesn't even try to decipher Popeye's mumblings this time... lol), but is less harsh on Olive.  Olive ends up by Bluto's side once again... lucky guy... and it's time for another demonstration.
And so, Bluto ends up pointing a gun right at Olive's head.  What could possibly go wrong?  Funny story... well, even though the gun's not loaded, it can still wreak some havoc.  And wreak it does!  For you see, Olive's head gets stuck in it.  The barrel's just barely larger than Olive's head, but stuck she is, ne'theless.  Panicked, Bluto grabs a giant tamping wand and hits Olive's head in a desperate attempt to get her out.  Popeye finally extricates himself from under the angry wind of the ship's propellers and is now by Olive's side.  Unfortunately for Olive, Popeye's philosophy is that Olive needs to go all the way through the gun to get her head out.  Bluto and Popeye struggle on in this vein until... had to double check how it came out.  Popeye prevailed, pushing Olive through the gun, and with such force that Bluto is knocked quite backwards.  "Why, dat one-eyed Casanova!" exclaims Bluto, picking himself up.
Apparently the inside of the gun has giant screw threads in it.  Seems a little strange to me, but I'm no sailor.  I've never seen a torpedo or a shell in person, but I've never seen one with screw threads.  But never mind; Olive is now shaped like the tail part of the screw... I'm no engineer either, so I'm unfamiliar with the technical names for the three parts of a screw.  I'll stop saying 'screw' after I point out that Popeye "unscrews" Olive, making her Olive-shaped once again.  The closed captioning informs me that Popeye mumbled "She looks like a shell looking for an assault!"  Uck uck uck indeed.
And so, with Olive returned to normal physical form, thinner than even Keira Knightley, and trust me, girls, you don't want to be much thinner than that... Popeye and Olive put their heads together and find themselves smitten.  See, these three get a clean mental slate with every new Popeye short, so it would seem.  And how do I know they were meant for each other?  Well, Popeye tells Olive "Gee, you're awful pretty" and Olive responds with "Oh, you're pretty awful yourself!"  Then again, Olive is a little flirty, as she ends up head to head with Bluto in the next instant!
But it's not the end of the pic yet, and these animated one-reelers typically aren't romances anyway.  They're comedies, damn it, and it's time to laugh again!  Still swooning, Olive heads down an inappropriately placed staircase, leaving Bluto and Popeye holding hands... thereby informing that one scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles... as well as a similar scene in Cabin Boy, a mere seven years later.  One double take later, Bluto punches Popeye, sending him flying into ... a giant horn?  I'm not even going to try anymore.  You know, Indiana Jones hid in one briefly in Raiders.  Here on the battle cruiser, they're not terribly deep.

ACT THREE

It must be time for Act Three.  It's about the two thirds mark in the proceedings!  Bluto catches up to Olive again and... yes!!!  Recurring gag time!  There's that darned powder room again.  All Olive wants to do is tidy up a bit!  Is that so much to ask?  Well, Bluto's not much for explaining things, and he just hustles Olive along to the ship's next "gadget."  This time, a demonstration of... the airplane catapult.  Ah, the early days of aviation.  Now, here's an example of where that famous Donald Rumsfeld line might actually work, because during WWII, we went to war with the airplane technology that we had, and not the jet planes that we might have liked to have had!  Of course, the economics of jet technology put an end to the brief kamikaze age... but I'll save that for my doctoral work.
And so, Olive stands on the platform that launches the planes, while Bluto shows her how the levers work that launch the planes... what could possibly go wrong?  And so, one boing sound later, Olive's flying around in the sky, the way William Goldman envisioned children flying around in the air as an opening for The Great Waldo Pepper.  It would have been a fine opening for the film where Susan Sarandon ends up falling off of a plane, and where Robert Redford punches out Edward Herrmann so that he'll stop screaming as he's burned alive from his fiery plane crash.  Sorry, back to this cartoon.  And so, Olive flies around and around, and comes down close to the "camera," thereby inspiring the leftmost of the five images on the inside sleeve of the DVD package... that's odd!  The third and fourth ones I don't remember!  Maybe they're on Disc Two or sumpthing.
And so, Olive ends up dangling from two wires high above the deck by her giant feet.  The twanging noise will be used in all future Popeye cartoons.  Bluto and Popeye try to climb up the same pole at the same time, but they're all too aware of each other, unlike the cats in A Gruesome Twosome when they make their first ascent to get the teentsy weentsy bird that would later come to be known as Tweety.  Bluto and Popeye throw some rather elastic punches at one another.  Bluto ultimately prevails and keeps climbing to save Olive... man, he must have a lot of muscles.  Look at that fat boy climb!  There isn't even a ladder on that thing!
Popeye falls into a rowboat and quickly and furiously rows around to the other side of the ship.  You know, where there's a ladder.  What a wuss.  Steven Seagal could climb up the side of that boat ALL BY HIMSELF!  And he's just a cook!  Anyway, Bluto must not be climbing very fast, because after all that, Popeye is already back at Bluto's side... yada yada yada.  And a bunch of other stuff happens.
This finale is downright action-packed!!!!  And it appears that there's not even going to be any spinach!  I feel robbed somehow.  Well, sailors are probably not allowed to bring their own rations aboard, especially when it's visitors day.  Anyway, unlike A Dream Walking, where the efforts of Popeye and Bluto ultimately did no harm to Olive, their shenanigans end up doing harm to Olive, as she ends up falling into the ship's largest steam pipe.

EPILOGUE

Olive's all covered with soot and... naughty naughty!  We're getting into a little blackface territory here.  Anyway, Olive ends up next to that darned old Powder Room.  "Oh, I simply must tidy up a bit!"  Unfortunately, this particular powder room has no lights.  Fortunately... or unfortunately, depending on your POV, Olive has a match and... yup, the second largest explosion I've ever seen in a Popeye cartoon.  The first being in The Mighty NaVy.  Well, I just examined both of them carefully.  They appear to be slightly different!  I guess it's a little bit easier to animate explosions, I guess.  The one in Mighty Navy lasts a lot longer and the billowing grey clouds come at us more ferociously somehow.  With Don't Mix, it doesn't last as long, and we get a shot of Olive's clothes flying into the air.  A few seconds later, Olive joins them, and don't worry, it's tastefully done.  Hays Code approved, what not.
As for the boys?  Well... we miss the part where the M.P.s escort them to the brig.  But in the brig they end up.  They needed a better lawyer.  Or higher ranks or something.  "As I was sayin'..." begins Bluto... you can guess the rest pretty much, except that Popeye uses his foot this time to shake hands.  Well, thank God this cartoon wasn't written by Norm MacDonald, because there would definitely be a mention of prison rape.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Marlies Carruth

Alas, this seems to be one person no auteur-wannabe will want to emulate.  Still, this Marlies Carruth can hold their head up higher than that Joe Queenan, that's for sure!  Making a film out of spite usually doesn't turn out well.
But how to get to Spielberg?  I mean, anyone can make one film, then call it quits forever.  Is there a path to Amblin, even in this shallow backwater we call the cast and crew of Girlfriends?  Well, I'd suggest Jeff Pacocha, but he's having his own struggles as it is.  No, this seems to be the first and last film of most everyone who worked on it.  Also, my software's being all douchey tonight.  Well, one trick I figured out is to look at the actors list.  If they've got a thumbnail photo, they're the ones to go to.  In this case, there's Jaqueline Fleming, and she's the only one who seems to have survived the Girlfriends experience, deciding that yes, Hollywood is the place for her.  Oh, Jaqueline Fleming... star of Malibooty! and Bad Ass 3, wilt thou return Marlies Carruth's phone calls?

So, in conclusion, we've got Marlies Carruth directing Girlfriends starring
Jaqueline Fleming who was in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, produced by
Tim Burton who... well, I think Spielberg's heard of him anyway.  Try that, Carruth!

This Just In: Sony Hackers Appointed New CEO of MGM

There's a giant bottleneck of movies headed our way, the likes of which I haven't seen in a long time.  Or maybe it's just business as usual.  But somehow I have a feeling the last episode of The Colbert Report is going to be "trending" for quite some time.  The sad thing is, it's only a little under exactly half of the stars that Bill O'Reilly has on his show every night!  And on his radio show every day!  Close second, Stephen... close second.
Of course, the big story this week is the removal from theaters of The Interview.  Oh, how some filmmakers would kill for that kind of publicity.  Welp, it's definitely a higher profile for Rogen and Franco, compared to their previous and usual efforts.
(Sunday proper) Assessing the damage... well, the latest installment of The Hobbit has still got it... for now, anyway.  It's probably not going to do a clean sweep at the Oscars, and frankly, the new, more organic quality of the picture is making me start to question why The Return of the King got so many Oscars!  I guess Peter Jackson finally decided to enable anti-aliasing.  He just wasn't ready to do that on the first trilogy.  And oh, don't tell me where Stephen Colbert is in the movie!  I want to find out for myself.
In other sad news, the final installment of Night at the Museum debuted this week.  Well, now that that's over, I guess Ben Stiller can get back to his first love: a sketch show on Fox.  Let's see them cancel him now, bitch!
I guess Christmas is a time of a lot of debuts.  It's a more generous time at the box office, unlike say in the summer, when a giant blockbuster can come along and crowd out all others from getting any sunlight.  The other debuts this week is the new Annie and something called P.K., or the first movie of that guy who appeared on The Colbert Report every once in a while, P.K. Winsome.  Hmm!  Wonder if Tyler Perry got a piece of the action.

The Color of Pain

...oh, now we're talking.  I was never a big fan of these Tom and Jerry shorts at first (...and I'm kinda still not), but after seeing Cue Ball Cat, it finally clicked that, yes, this is where Itchy and Scratchy come from.  Of course, Tom and Jerry aren't as violent... at least, physically, but psychologically?  Perhaps more so!  I suppose because the Tom and Jerry aren't a parody of anything, and of course represent well the MGM brand, and what it's really all about.

ACT ONE

Ah, the pool hall.  Is there any more suitable location for a movie?  I mean, besides a bar?  Which, incidentally, often feature such tables... the dramatic possibilities.  Virtually endless.  One thing I like about this cartoon is that they get out of the house for a change.  How many of these things take place inside a house?  If only there were a blog that kept track of such things.  After all, I'm only planning on doing just the 40 on the DVD collection I have... okay, sure, there's I'm Just Wild About Jerry that takes place in and around a department store, but I don't think that one's on the collection.
Anyway, that's the location.  Now to re-introduce our recurring character.  We start with the cat, as usual, as is typical.  This time, however, all the cat wants to do is shoot a little pool!  Usually he's tormenting the mouse in some new, unique way.  Not this time.  The cat wants to grow up to be a pool shark... but the way he's going, he'll never make the tournament circuit, especially if you lift up the table so that the ball will go in.  Good Lourdes.  Amateur night all the way.  The second ball gets trapped in some sort of endless loop.  Ah, reminds me of good ol' Arkanoid... the second one, not the virtually featureless first one.  The cat pulls the middle hole over so the ball will go in.  That's your old fashioned animation right there, as David Letterman might quip.  This was long before Adobe Flash!  Long before it was even Macromedia!!
And then... third ball's the charm.  We go into the proverbial rabbit hole, but it doesn't go that deep and reveal the truth about our government, and that it's a little bit greedy.  Okay, a lot.  No, we find that, once again, surprise surprise, the little rat picks another inconvenient place to sleep.  Why?  How?  Der?  Does the mouse want to be woken up?  Does it WANT to?  The mouse wakes up just before the ball hits the bed.  The ball pushes the little rat down to the bottom of the table where all the pool balls reconvene.  The mouse gets mashed into a kind of capital 'I' shape, and to the sound of... bowling pins, that's right.  Well, pool balls don't sound quite as dynamic.... damn, they don't have it.  I'm reminded of the time Homer destroyed Flanders' pool table.  That sounded like real pool balls!  High-larious.
Anyway, back to this crap.  Okay, the mouse has a point.  Those kids oughta cut out that loud racquet and let him get some sleep.  Still... no other place to sleep in the entire pool hall?  Maybe right by the fire exit?  Or in the extra-comfy ball return tunnel?  And so, Jerry marches up to the roof level of the pool table... oh, that's where that music is from!  I remembered those eight notes at 1:32 in the proceedings.  Simple, memorable.  Sure, it's no Blue Rondo a la Turk, but it's good enough for this kid's matinee!

ACT TWO

And so, Jerry emerges to politely ask Tom to please play at another table, and quietly.  There's about thirty tables in the place!  Jerry looks around but doesn't see the cat or... whoever it was that disturbed his slumber.  Might have been a person, he doesn't know.  Only the audience knows for sure.  And then... the nightmare begins.  There's Tom, giving the same dirty look to Jerry that Jerry gave to pool players unseen.  Frightened, Jerry takes off in a linear fashion down the diagonal length of the pool table.  Now the fun begins.  Tom gets the cue ball and sends it Jerry's way.  He's turning into a pool shark already!  He put some serious spin on the ball so that it catches up to the mouse, yet has enough spin left to return to the cat like some kind of spherical boomerang, buzzing like a bee all the way.  We get an awesome, epic, semi-game-changing "shot" of the mouse sliding up Tom's pool cue.  The mouse is now close enough for the cat to eat, but it's still early in the pic, so the cat blows on the mouse with a rather anthropomorphic gust of wind, and it's time for more mischief at the mouse's expense.
Now, here's where the logic completely breaks down.  Tom's got a line of about seven or eight pool balls all lined up in a straight line, ready to go.  He hits the balls, and off they go.  Surprisingly, the mouse doesn't get out of the way!  It's Popeye all over again: Popeye has to endure pain and suffering for five minutes, then gets to inflict it himself in his spinach-induced furies for about a minute.  With the cat and mouse, it's about equal throughout.
And so, the mouse gets run over by about twenty pool balls.  We see twelve bounce off the end of the pool table and come back after poor old little Jerry.  Jerry manages to outrun the balls this time, but when he gets to the end of the table, he stops, and the pool balls stack up under him, lifting him up to Tom's eye level.  And how many pool balls are there in this stack?  Only six!!  Busted.
Alas, Tom's standards aren't so high.  After all, you go to pool with the balls you have, not the balls you would like to have, or the balls that your neighbor has.  I mean, that's just math.  And Communism, frankly... okay, we've got actual numbers now.  Tom starts off with a queue of seven pool balls.  After a flurry of stars and one of those white pointy explosion shapes dissipates, as often happens in these proceedings, the mouse gets run over by EIGHTEEN pool balls!!!!!  Eleven balls bounce off the corner of the table, and as we follow Jerry, we can only see five balls in the shot.  This isn't one of their Cinemascope shorts, so five's probably about right for a shot that tight.
And then we come to the stack of six pool balls.  Boy, I must be hungry.  Remember when ice cream cones used to be that tall in cartoons?  Nummy numb.  And so, Tom hits the six balls, then one extra hit for the mouse proper... but, what's this?  The mouse is hanging on to the end of the pool cue in an act of non-violent resistance.  But this proverbial British Empire of a cat's got the perfect pool-based torture for that, and the cat rubs one of those blue chalks on top of the mouse's head.  Reminds me of a funnier scene from Laurel and Hardy's classic short, Brats.  Enjoy it now, 'cuz it probably ain't going to be up too long after posting the link.
And so, the mouse sticks to its guns and clings to the pool cue, even though the cat is obviously about to hit the ball.  But I guess it's all part of the larger strategy: the more pain and humiliation the mouse is forced to endure, the more pain and humiliation he can give back to the cat.  And how!  But for now, the forces of gravity are on the cat's side, and the eight ball is the cat's all-too-willing participant.  The mouse runs along the top of the eight ball as it spins in circles.  The cat uses the ball triangle as a hoop for the mouse to jump through.  The cat lights the triangle on fire and makes the mouse jump through it!  And yet, the lion and the cat were enemies in the previous cartoon.  Well, lions have no sense of irony, so it would seem.  Even the forces of thermodynamics are colluding with Tom!  There's a little patch of unburnt wood so the cat can hold the burning triangle in comfort.  In the final insult, Tom hits the eight ball out from under Jerry with such great force, that the ball bounces off the far end of the pool table, onto the mouse's ass.  It bounces back, and yet, the mouse goes hungry!  Where's the justice?
And so, the mouse ends up with an eight on its ass.  Well, needles to say, that is indeed the last straw.  Jerry needs to get his own justice, and take the law into his own tiny mouse hands.  For an opening salvo, he pulls back Tom's pool cue, then lets it go right in Tom's face.  The tables have now officially turned.  And yet, Jerry runs away like a coward.

ACT TWO AND A HALF

Tom picks up the eight ball and chucks it at the mouse harder than Randy Johnson... who's the famous pitcher?  Stengel?  Koufax?  Anyway, surely the eight ball will hit the mouse tried and true again?  After the great partnership that the cat and said eight ball have had up til now?  Alas, it wasn't meant to last.  The ball bounces back and hits Tom in the face.  Tom's face caves in, of course.  I haven't seen an impact that hard since the finale of Wagon Heels... I mean, A Tale of Two Kitties.  A slightly more politically correct choice, but not by much, arguably.  And evidently, Tom's head has engulfed the eight ball.  Tom's face reappears, but it's so small!!!  Is this the end of Tom as we know it?... oh, apparently not.  Back to normal.  Tom now chucks two balls at the mouse.  How's the mouse going to react to this?  Maybe duck out of the way?  No, see, that's the sensible option.  The super-strong mouse instead gets its own pool cue and hits the two balls with the cue as though it were a giant baseball bat.  These balls hit Tom in the eyeballs.  After reemerging from behind the pool table, we see that Tom's giant eyelids have accommodated a new set of eyes.  But tis a mere summer romance.  The filmmakers wait long enough for that odd mix of laughs and groans, and then the cat shakes its head, making a weird percussive noise, and gets those pool balls out of its eyes.  I tell you darlings, the older I get, the more I feel that cat's pain.
The cat winks at the audience before throwing the next ball.  I don't know why; we know he's not really going to beat that mouse.  Well, the cat's now caught the pool balls with its eyes and its head, but surely he can catch it with a baseball glove over one paw, right?  ...spoiler alert: nope.  The cat's got a cannonball wound on its hand.  Anyone got a tube of cannonball wound ointment?  The nice touch, of course ,is that you can see the blue-grey of what's left of the cat's paw on the edges of the hole in the glove.  And yet, Oliver Stone tries to do the same gag in Natural Born Killers and the lily livers over at the W.B. threaten the dreaded NC-17.
Well, that tears it.  The tear in the glove and paw tears it.  Tom chucks the one ball at Jerry as hard as he can.  No wink to the audience this time; that time has passed.  Jerry hits the ball so hard with his pool cue that the cue snaps in half.  And so, Tom has to try and catch it, of course.  Well, at least the baseball glove is intact once again, even if the logic of this cartoon isn't.  I mean, how high is the ceiling in that place?  A mile?  Two miles?  If we tried shenanigans like that, the ball would just bounce around like in that Tron sequel that I only saw part of.  So high-tech, so yawn.  Man, I'm getting tired just thinking about it.  Anyway, Tom weaves his way through the labyrinth of pool tables and sure enough, after the pool ball comes back through the atmosphere after going around the moon, Tom catches it, only now it's the size of a grapefruit, but at least its velocity is such that the baseball glove is not disintegrated.  Tom lands in an old timey sodey pop dispenser.  The machine burps him out, bottle cap and all.  Alas, the Hays Code didn't protect us from all burps.  Then again, it's a rather strange-sounding burp.  I can only imagine its aroma.
After waiting for the laugh, Tom heads over to Jerry's table again.  Jerry dives into the pocket, and gets an accompanying musical flourish: note A, up one note to note B, then back down to note A... man, did I lose all my crucial musical education.  Tom gets the same flourish, but an octave lower.  Boy!  This one's memorable for the music for me!  How narrow I've gotten... thanks, Internet!  Anyway, this next gag I remember.  Tom reaches down into the pocket for the little rat, but the rat's playing chess to the cat's checkers, as always.  The mouse gets the cat's tail, pulls it into the hole behind the one the cat's exploring... perhaps I didn't phrase that right.  Anyway, the mouse gives the cat his own tail, which of course the cat all too gleefully confuses for the mouse.  The cat pulls and... a Mobius strip?  We almost get an endless loop here!  Fortunately for the cat, it stops after about four iterations.  Doubly fortunately, the cat's able to get out of the pocket of the pool table.  Now, Ted Danson in Creepshow?  Can't get out of the sand!  Get on that, MythBusters.

ACT THREE

Things take a turn for the worse after Tom's last failure at the pool table.  Time to get modern industrial inventions into the act.  These were the old days, of course, with more government regulations about keeping fire hoses in pool halls.  No wonder they all went out of business!  This hall's got an industrial-strength, firefighter-strength hose in the place!  Tom unhooks the hose, turns it on, gets next to the pool table, and unleashes the water.  Then he puts the nozzle into the pocket and watches as fountains rise from all the other pockets.  Process of elimination, folks.  And then... SUCCESS!  Jerry is flushed out at the other corner of the table.  Of course, Tom's not ready to just grab and eat the mouse just yet.  Why not try to hit it with that thing... you know, the thing amateurs use to help them aim at the ball?  A sticky wicket!  That's it!  And then... time for the callback gag.  Tom swishes at Jerry... but where did Jerry go?  Why, he's hanging on to the end of the thing!  Jerry reaches for the wire scoreboard, then takes the sticky wicket away from Tom.  Alpha mouse time.  Also, I like how the filmmakers are using every part of the pool hall to maximum comedic advantage.  In further Alpha mouse action, Jerry is now using the sticky wicket to walk across the scoreboard wire.
The cat's obviously impressed and jealous, and his first reaction is to throw a pool cue at the mouse, javelin style... oh, and the hose water has stopped flowing.  It's either a plot device, laziness on the animator's part, or the cat just wasted all the water in the place.  Nice going, Tom... nice going.  Just try and wait for the Fire Department before you cause your next inevitable fire, okay?
And now... the part that will haunt your nightmares forever.  Tom pitches his first javelin slash pool cue at the little rat... I mean, Jerry, the poor, long-suffering mouse narrator.  The wire the mouse is balancing on acts like a table saw, and sounds like a table saw as the pool cue is split in half.  Let me just see if the YouTubes has that Laurel and Hardy where their car gets cut in half... oh, wait, that's the part where Hardy gets hit in the face with a giant sink.  Close enough.  Man, do I have a love hate relationship with that sink hit.
The next pool cue just barely misses the mouse, but it does leave the mouse with a glowing red ass like a tiny baboon or something.  Well, if there's one thing Jerry Mouse hates, it's when anything happens to his ass: the eight-ball incident, this, what have you.  Well, instead of pulling back on Tom's pool cue, Jerry pulls back on the scoreboard wire and launches the sticky wicket right at Tom... how did the mouse do that, exactly?  The mouse can fly now?  Or hover?  That'd be much worse.  Now, in case you didn't think of it yourself, the end of that sticky wicket looks exactly like giant 'duh' buck teeth.  Which is what the cat ends up saying once the sticky wicket is completely inside the cat, mostly in its tail.  Tom once again rises up above the level of the pool table to show us his latest injury.  Oh, I'll just never look at pool tables the same way ever ever again.
Alas, that last move cost Jerry his superior aerial position above the cat, and is now running down the length of the pool table again.  And once again, Tom calls on the Spirit of Minnesota Fats, and summons his minions in a straight line once again to chase after Jerry Mouse.  Tom smites the end of the queue of pool balls, and off the chase goes once again.  Reminds me of a similar situation in The Yankee Doodle Mouse, when Tom sent a line of glittering Roman candles after Jerry Mouse, except that this time the pool balls sound like an oncoming train.  Jerry and the pool balls do their version of the hallway gag.  I made a link collage of that previously... but where?  Where oh where could that thang be?  I'm thinking my review of Loose Loot... nope!  Figures.  My empire lies in ruins.  My ancestors rise from their graves, only to have me have to bury them anew... actually, they want to switch spots.  How weird is that?
For a brief moment, Jerry thinks he's in the clear... but the pool-ball-ipede sneaks up in front of him... Jerry's looking behind himself.  The eleven ball is the head of the pool-ball-ipede... and it frowns at Jerry!  GINIUS!!!  Four stars.  Jerry takes off towards Tom with the angry pool balls close behind.  Which leads us to the next part that will haunt your nightmares forever.  Jerry jumps on Tom's mouth, briefly giving him a dog-like muzzle, and the whole act emits a crashing sound with a slight crunch of glass at the end.  Jerry pries open Tom's mouth, and in go the pool balls!  There's seven of them total this time... and I guess the cat's lucky that that's all he used, because they all enter the cat's throat, each one somehow causing a gulping noise.  And just like the sound of a glass filling up with water from the tap slowly increases in pitch, each successive gulp noise gets slightly higher in pitch... you know, now that I think about it, the time that Tom had to swallow an apple is probably worse.
Not having learnt his lesson from pulling himself through the pool table and back out, Tom is reduced to poking one of the pool table's pockets with a pool cue.  Tom starts trying to shove the pool cue into the pocket... you know, just to see how far in it will go!  Well it only goes in a couple of feet, so he gets one of those...
...meat thermometers?
Yeah!... am I the only one who remembers that?  Anyway, Jerry notices that the pool cue is now headed rather directly for the cat's... um... posterior.  What's a mouse to do?  Well, any other mouse would probably do nothing, but Jerry, ever the Sadist, ties a pin cushion pin to the end of the cue.  You know, just to give the pool cue that little extra zing.  And zing it does.  Tom's face turns red... well, before that happens, the pin gleams in the light.  You know, like knives often do in the movies.  And ever the Sadist, Jerry tugs on the pool cue a couple of times.  You know, as though the cat were fishing or something.  But there's no reeling in the fish this time.  No, this is a push type deal here, not pull.  And push Tom does.  Now, any ordinary cartoon would just have the cat squeal in pain, but this is near the end, and we do need a big finish, so rather than wait for the laugh, Tom sits there with the red face a few seconds so the audience all get uncomfortable at the same time.  And then... skyward he goes, screaming like a man in pain.  Jerry gets into the shot and looks skyward to admire his handiwork, then exits Stage Left as the cat plummets back to earth.  The long-suffering cat falls into the pocket, right on top of the part of the pool cue still sticking out, but because the cat landed with such force... I assume his arms and legs are broken... the cat is unable to lift itself out of the pocket.

EPILOGUE

With the cat stuck in a tight spot, Jerry decides to play a proper game of pool... not that dinking around that the cat was doing with two or three balls earlier like a thief in the night.  No, Jerry's got the triangle out, all fifteen balls in place.  Note the smug satisfaction on the little rat's face.  The mouse confidently tosses the triangle aside, then puts a little of the powder blue chalk on the tip of the pool cue, then confidently tosses that aside.
And so, the mouse smites the cue ball and off the fifteen balls go.  In a slight show of respect, none of them hit the cat, but it does seem to be shaping up to an all-consuming hole in one, the kind even Tom Cruise's character in The Color of Money couldn't pull off.  But wait!  Surely there's one last act of cruelty the mouse can heap upon the cat?  Well, don't worry, all you Sadists out there, for your prayers are about to be answered.  One last ball is heading towards the cat.  The cat looks on depressingly as he anticipates a gentle tap on the chin or something.  But before that happens, the mouse runs up and hits the cat on the head with the pool cue... and hard.  The cat is yelling in pain with its mouth wide open... allowing the pool ball to fall right in.  The cat gets the ball stuck in its throat for a second, then swallows it.  So is that his eighth pool ball ingested today?  Or did he throw up the other seven earlier?  So many questions unanswered.  I guess that's what makes this a classic... still, I can't help but feel a little dirty.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Louisa May Alcott's The Little Brats

Our next Popeye short is... ugh.  Better get this title right, I suppose.  It's called Pip-Eye, Pup-Eye, Poop-Eye an' Peep-Eye.  In case you don't know, I don't care for the little bastards personally.  I think I hate 'em.  Maybe not enough so that they start to drag Popeye down with them, but who knows?  The evening's young!  We'll see what happens.

ACT ONE

For now, Olive's spared the indignity of it all.  Popeye and his four nephews... or whatever the hell relation they are to him... they're all at the table, rudely slurping away at soup.  That it's in time with the music only makes it worse... wasn't there a scene in A Serious Man that was kinda like this?  And so, when the soup's finished, Popeye goes to get the gruesome foursome some spinach.  Well, they'd rather go fishing, and they decide to do just that while Popeye's in the kitchen.  See, they know the ritual very well, and while it may seem lazy to you and me, the way they're sneaking out right in plain sight of Popeye... well, Popeye apparently is so full of pride over his spinach that he keeps his eyes shut when doling out the four bowls of it.  Why does this part remind me of that game, Lode Runner?  Hmmm... Anyway, it's only at the last minute, when he's about to reveal that they'll go fishing anyway once the spinach is consumed, that he opens his eyes and sees that they're all gone.  "Hey!" says Popeye.  The four quicken their pace down the stairs... okay, that's kinda funny.  But I still hate them.

ACT TWO

And so, with the guilty party returned to the courtroom, Popeye has to once again plead his case to the world that spinach is good.  His four nephews aren't buying it, however.  Same thing happened in the 1980 Popeye movie.  Poopdeck Pappy had to convince Popeye that spinach is good, but Popeye wasn't having any of it.  Why, Robin Williams threw the can over his shoulder and out the contents went!  That must've been tough to film.  They had to put it on a wire or something. 
The four little brats say "But we don't like spinach!"  They split up the sentence amongst the four of them.  Creepy.  Even twins aren't that creepy.  Popeye's pipe and hat both spin at this insurrection.  Popeye begins his case.  "Spinach can make ya strong enough to does impossikible stunks!" says Popeye.  But it's early in the film yet, so let's start with something simple.  First impossikible stunt:... playing the piano?  Seriously?  Has it become Linda Richman time already?  Playing the piano is neither impossikible, nor a stunt.  Discuss.  I'll keep it brief: it just takes years of practice is all, and it also helps to start when you're young, probably, and you don't have access to the internet.  That's kinduva time hog, in case you didn't know.  Reminds me: better check my email, my Reddit account, all my new Pinterest pins... ooh, and it's been a few hours since I played Clash of Candies!  Better upgrade my Flash player for that.  And so, as in The Spinach Overture, Popeye eats some spinach and bangs away at the piano.  A few years before both Rhapsody Rabbit and The Cat Concerto and we've already got some perspective shots that they used later on!  Go figure.
Call me crazy, but you'd think that Popeye selling spinach would be able to make a fortune, but never underestimate the bounds of sibling rivalry in particular, or familial rivalry in general.  Powerful stuff, take it from me.  Despite its very, very obvious benefits, the four little chips off the old ugly, butt-chinned block aren't having any of it.  They reiterate that they don't like spinach.  Such unity from a four-mouthed multi-bodied organism.  Apparently anything artistic isn't the nephew's skill set.  No, arbitrage is more their focus.  That's probably why I dislike them so much... or maybe it's just the jealousy talking.  I still say the former.
Next stunt: dancing, which Popeye has done a few times with the aid of spinach.  I actually got confused with his word-mangling when he said "How does ya think Fred Upstairs learned to dance?"  Oh, he means Fred A-staire!  That does it... four stars for this cartoon.  Incidentally, check out that IMDb number.  Yup, Astaire is #1.  When they were first setting this thing up twenty years ago, they were going about it alphabetically.  Now there's too many people on this damn thing.  How can there be 10 million people in movies?  I say, more elitism in Hollywood, damn it!  And so, the theme song a second time, a second can of spinach in the same pic, then time for some fancy footwork.  Alas, Popeye's no Bob Fosse, and the four little punks stand their ground all the firmer.  Popeye's head starts shaking and damn near doesn't stop.
Popeye's head eventually stops shaking, and he tries a different tactic.  Pugilism!  That's the key!  I think Popeye means Jack Dempsey when he mangles yet another name.  Okay, he's got the four little pukes' interest this time, so time for an unprecedented third helping of spinach.  Alas, Popeye probably needs a better boxing partner.  He just has himself for this ad hoc demonstration.  How does he ever expect to get through to his nephews all by himself and his many flat cans of spinach hiding in his shirt?
Okay, so he manages to give the appearance of two Popeyes, but he's no... Multiple Man?  That's the character's name?  Sheesh.  I mean, why do any research?  "Thousand-o"'s too dorky and "Mitosio" makes him seem too Greek.  And so, for a bintel brief, Popeye ends up punching himself out, and apparently it was too effective, because he slowly picks himself up off the rug.  I guess he had too much spinach or something.

ACT THREE

The nephews are unmoved by Popeye's empassioned argument.  At this point, Popeye takes the more direct approach and threatens a spanking.  He's hesitant to do it, and barely gets the words out, but the anger on the nephews' faces is resolute.  At this point, Popeye starts weeping, and frankly, I can't says that I blame him.  He reluctantly gathers up the nephews, meanders over to the chair, and administers the spanking... hmm!  Wonder whatever happened to Michael Fey.  Is that the dude's name? 
This is why the four nephews creep me out.  The nephews are stacked on top of each other like some kind of awful centipede... I mean, spank-i-pede.  Popeye spanks the top nephew, and it travels down to the posteriors of the other nephews.  They each say "Ouch!" in reverse order, as though the spank is travelling back up to the top of the nephew stack.  The scene is so creepy that I'm only going to watch it one more time... all the action seems to be timed at the old reliable six beats per second.  Slightly less stress on the animators that way.
And so, like all kids and vegetables, the four nephews sit there at their respective bowls of steaming spinach and slowly and sadly eat.  Alas, it can't all be ice cream.  And then... by God!  It happens!  The awesome power of spinach is bestowed upon the four nephews!  Of course, Popeye doesn't know his own nephews like I know them and... yup, sure enough, as sure as eggs is eggs, the very first item on the nephews' spinach-fueled agenda, in a word... revenge.  For them, sweet, sweet revenge.  For me, my loyalty lies with Popeye and not the hell spawn that he's forced to care for.  Where is this so-called brother of Popeye?  Why does Popeye have to be his brother's nephews' keeper?  After all they have put him through up til now?  And all the misery yet to come?
But for once, the nephews show a little finesse.  Apparently they did indeed remember Popeye's piano lesson from earlier, and off to the piano they go to hammer out some notes.  The song may sound sweet to Popeye's ears, but it's all sarcasm to me.  Also, they seem to have sped up the piano music, so it sounds like a weird dwarf piano or something.  Interesting choice.  I know the nephews' voices have to be sped up, but the piano?  Seriously?
And so, like Harpo in... I forget which one.  I think it was A Day at the Races where he beats the sh... stuffing out of a piano until it's nothing but a converted harp, so too do the nephews break up their piano, and grab four switches from it.  As they march towards Popeye, Popeye finally gets it.  I mean, why give a blowtorch to an arsonist?  Why?  Alas, Popeye sees every problem as a nail, and up til now he's been able to hammer in most nails with a wad of spinach in his fist, but he's in a real existential crisis here, arguably even worse than in Hello, How am I? and that one seemed to rock Popeye to his very core.  But he's about to be hoisted on his own petard, and even the father in The Omen was conflicted.  Sure, his son was the devil incarnate, but kill a kid?  That's one of those things one just doesn't do.  I mean, that's just math... probably.
And so, the Passion of the Popeye begins in full, all to the tune of "Hold That Tiger."  Now it's Popeye's turn to get spanked, and spanked he does.  Under the fan, in the dumbwaiter, it's a little hard to watch.  But it's still less sadistic than Two Gophers from Texas.  Oh, and, of course, the nephews use Popeye's words against him, the little pricks.  They say "We hates to do this..."  Yeah yeah, we get it.

EPILOGUE

And so, the four little brats, having spanked Popeye all the way back out of their building and onto the sidewalk, go on that fishing trip all the same, stepping on Popeye along the way for good measure.  There is no joy in Popeyeville, having been rubbed out like a cigarette butt on the pavement, and there is no ending theme because Popeye is clearly not strong to this particular finich.  The iris closes and the nephews make one last appearance, reiterating that they don't like spinach.  Which comes as a relief to me, because I don't think Popeye will be feeding it to them again any time soon.  Maybe Popeye can treat them to some ice cream instead... with a dash of arsenic.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Djinn Carrénard

Oh good!  Another short one.  Well, keep an eye on this Mr. Carrénard, because this kid's going places.  He's got a favourable review from The Hollywood Reporter, and he seems to have survived the usual sophomore slump with these things.  Now they say this guy's a fresh powerful voice on the scene and all that... but I dunno.  I don't care too much for these guys who are all about love, and these first two films are apparently all about love.  No, if you really wanna leave a mark on the cine, do like Paul Thomas Anderson.  I mean, Magnolia isn't necessarily all about love, right?  Okay, love and a bit with some frogs.  Comedy.  That's what the people want.
But then again, what do I know.  All I know is that, once again, my software has let me down, big surprise.  So I gotta go in manually.  There's apparently no connection to Spielberg, until you consider Saul Williams, star of stage and screen, and of Carrénard's Faire: l'amour (FLA).  Better call Saul, that's what I say!  So we got...

Saul Williams in FLA who also worked with...
Kevin Spacey in the spacey K-PAX and...

...well, it gets murky after that.  Let's say he was in Goldmember with Steven Spielberg.  Practically the same part of the film even!  Better get to Hollywood that-a-way.

Mock... Yeah... Ing... Yeah... Jay.... Yeah.... Yeah, yeah, yeah.....................

Awkward!!!  Ah, big deal.  So the studio head didn't think you'd be a good director.  Does that come as a total shock, Angelina?  Anyway, while we're still enjoying the fruits of the Sony hackers' labours, the mundane business of surveying the train wreck that is the weekly box office continues.  This week?  In a word?  Numbers.  Numbers, numbers, numbers.  Big Hero 6, Horrible Bosses 2, Dumb and Dumber To, Mockingjay, Part 1, and of course at #1, it's Exodus 24:50... something like that.  The god of septuagenarian film directors, Ridley Scott, does it again with the latest retelling of the story of Moses.  Eat it, Lionel Chetwynd.  Ridley's also taking a page from the book of Woody Allen and using the same font from Prometheus for the promos for Exodus.  Nice touch!
Speaking of numbers, Chris Rock is back in the top 10 with his latest writer-director effort called... wait for it... Top Five, a thinly autobiographical effort with a daring cast.  I mean... Rosario Dawson?  Gabrielle Union?  Are they still hot?  Still, always nice to see J.B. Smoove, of course, or is it wrong to say that?  A little down time between seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
The only other debut this week is the latest movie with the word "wild" in the title.  I mean, we've been through The Wild, Wild America... actually, we should probably skip that one.  It's called simply Wild and it seems to be what Kim Basinger was to I Dreamed of Africa, only more profitable.  Also it's thematically kind of a victory lap for Reese Witherspoon, an in-theme-only sequel to A Far Off Place, if you will... no one?  Just me?  Well, NEVER MIND, THEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Next Tom and Jerry: Josie and the Pussycats.... I mean, Jerry and the Goldfish

So what would it be like if the mouse had a pet?  That's basically the conceit of Jerry and the Goldfish and, as much as I hate to admit it, I'm uncomfortable with this relationship.  I don't know why, but I just am.  And if you watch this cartoon, pretty soon you'll realize that the fish just might be as well!

ACT ONE

We start with the fish snoring away in its bowl... do fish sleep?  Can they even close their eyes?  Hmm.  So many questions.  I guess ichthyology just wasn't in the cards for me.  And then... the mouse shows up, looking excitedly at the fish bowl.  Too weird for me.  Usually the cat does that.  Usually the mouse is just minding its own mouse business, but clearly he's out looking for trouble now.  Jerry taps on the glass and wakes up the fish.  The fish swims around in small circles.  Jerry breaks off a hunk of the disc he's carrying and throws it in the air over the bowl.  The fish leaps up like some kind of trained dolphin or a Pavlovian sea monkey and grabs the bit of food.  Now, this is how dumb I am.  I'm assumpting that it's a piece of cheese... or is it?  Is it a) cheese, b) a slice of banana, or c) some kind of cracker?  There's arguments for each, of course.  It's probably cheese, but why would he slice the cheese like that?  Or is it some kind of pre-Ritz cracker?  After all, the mouse hands the rest of it to the fish, and the fish dunks it in the water.  Why would the fish do that with a bit of cheese?  And banana, well... you'd think that that would be the easiest for the fish to digest.
After the food has been eaten, Jerry pats the glass and the fish rubs up against the fish bowl at that spot.  See what I mean?  Jerry's pet fish.  Just plain wrong.
Cross-fade to Tom, who's listening to the radio.  See, I'm uncomfortable with this relationship, too... or am I?  After all, the radio did warn Tom about that lion in that one... let me check the box here... Jerry and the Lion, it's called.  In three weeks, Jerry's Cousin.  You know, the one from the country with the stutter.  Sheesh.  Anyway, back to the radio: teacher, mother, secret lover.  This ought to eat up some time!

ACT TWO

And so, at a mere 1:56, Inception is complete.  No need for fancy dream-invading hardware here!  One ordinary recipe, and the cat is hooked.  Fish is on the menu.  If you're in the right mood for it, the perfect setup.  If not, it's still the classical dramatic structure: one party wants the fish for long-term friendship, the other for short-term gastronomical gain.  Short-term doesn't deserve to win, for some reason.  Better broaden the moral base of this proverbial Herbrand universe.
And so, the cat is off and running, expending energy.  Energy is force used to perform work.  Work is a series of tasks to achieve a goal... I'm ready for that PhD test after all!  Sorry, I'll try to focus now.  Tom slinks up the chair, disappears behind the arm rest, then his head pops up from behind said arm rest.  Look at that mischievous grin on his face!  Surely Chuck Jones did the animation!  I'm reminded of his Grinch cartoon.
Cut to the sleeping fish.  Spoiler alert: the fish bowl is resting on a table.  And yet... a few seconds later, the table starts to move!  GENIUS!  Visual genius!  Another spoiler alert: the table gets turned visually on the cat at the end of the pic.  Surely Kubrick directed this cartoon!  Anyway, back to the action.  Staying committed to the visual gag, Tom carries the table all the way to the kitchen, then slides the bowl onto the oven range, then turns up the heat.  Diabolical.  Tom licks his over-salivated chops, then proceeds to get the other mundane vegetable ingredients of the radio recipe.  I'm reminded of Eric Idle's fish-feeding sketch for some reason.  Of course, he did it on both Monty Python, and Saturday Night Live, Lorne Michaels' answer to Monty Python.  How does Lorne sleep at night?
Tom chops up some carrots, and the carrot discs hit the poor fish on the head.  See, this is one of the joys of cartoons.  You try something like that in real life, and boom.  Several government agencies and non-profits are all up in your grill in particular, and the general public in general is probably in disgust at you.  Tom stirs the fish bowl water with a spoon and takes a sip.  Even the fish's dirty water tastes good!  Well, store-bought fish somehow doesn't excite the palate as much.
And then... FINALLY.  Jerry shows up, but he's just meandering along at the pace of Jones.  But when he deigns to look up, FINALLY he's in shock.  Good Lord.  The fish is half way to death's door already!  Well, Tom... I mean, Jerry springs into action.  Why, he opens up the oven door, kicks Tom inside and slams the door upon that mean ol' cat.  Meanwhile, the fish and bowl are still on that burning oven!  Do they want to kill that fish?  Do they?
Next scene: Jerry's carrying the bowl out of the kitchen.  FINALLY!!!  The fish is on the road to recovery.  Boy!  So not only is the mouse super-strong, but its hands are super-insulated, or maybe he cooled off the bowl somehow.  Wouldn't it be hot?  Or maybe it's like how Michael Caine was suddenly dry when getting out of the water in Jaws the Revenge... I'm sorry, that's Jaws: The Revenge.  Gotta make sure I get that right... this is a blog, after all!
But despite Jerry's best efforts, that fishbowl is too cumbersome and too prized.  Tom the Raging Foodie cuts Jerry off at the pass, so to speak.  And by pass, I mean the other end of the kitchen, where he waits for Jerry to pass with the bowl.  Jerry keeps running, holding his hands up, not realizing the bowl's gone.  The mouse is slipping, I tells ya!  He's losing it!  Or maybe he doesn't care about that fish as much as he thought!  That's my take on it.  But the mouse does indeed make up for lost time.  How, you might ask?  How else?  The mouse gets a baseball bat and hits the cat in the legs with it.  Unfortunately, FOR THE FISH, Tom drops the bowl on the ground, and the fish and the water go flying high up into the air.  Boy!  Tall ceiling.  On the plus side, the fish bowl doesn't break.  Well, on the instant replay, the bowl moves as though it's made of Jell-O when it hits the ground, so there's something going on there.
Acting quickly, the mouse picks up a drinking glass, and catches some of the water in it, and then the fish.  I'm telling you, darlings, this is clearly an abusive relationship.  That fish needs to get the hell out of there.
And so, in the cat and mouse's endless game of rock-paper-scissors, Jerry heads for that hole in the wall, but at the last second, steps to the left instead, and the cat crashes head first into the wall.  The cat lays unconscious... but is blocking the hole in the wall with its giant head!  Fortunately, the cat is positioned so that the mouse can carry the glass with the fish in it through the cat's head via its ears.  We see them make their getaway through the cat's eyes.  Notice that the mouse's hole in the wall is now tall enough to accommodate the drinking glass.  I smell a rat.  The cat wakes up, looks angrily at the hole, then disappears to come up with a devious new strategy.

ACT TWO AND A HALF

The coast is clear.  The mouse's face lights up when it sees the empty fish bowl in place on the table.  Somehow that doesn't seem like it should be the goal at this point, but never mind.  Oh, The Movie Hooligan, searching for logic in a child's cartoon.  A fool's errand.  And so, the mouse quickly runs with the glass with the fish in it over to the bowl.  Jerry pushes the glass as close to the fish bowl as he can.  The fish climbs up out of the glass and jumps back into the fish bowl... almost.  Yup, there's Tom with a skillet.  The fish lands in the skillet with a couple of tiny thuds, and Tom takes off for the kitchen again.  I can't think of a finer babysitter for our kids than this cartoon.  Well, it can't all be Sesame Street, right?  Sesame Street doesn't teach you street fighting tactics, does it?  Does it encourage strategy and emotional intelligence?  The world has too many Toms in it, and they're winning.
Tom's getting a little savvier in his cooking, too.  Tom dips the fish in flour and puts it back in the skillet.  But Jerry's close behind this time!  Tom throws the fish into the air, and where it lands, he does care this time, and he catches the fish in his mouth.  Well, Jerry takes that skillet and bashes Tom right in the face with it.  When the skillet is removed, we see Tom's frozen expression on his face, and those giant un-cat-like teeth!  But even the gag writers get tired of the same old broken fragments of teeth falling out, so this time Jerry opens the teeth as though they're Venetian blinds.  The fish climbs out, but at least it's not wearing any flour anymore!  Back into Jerry's temporary glass and on the run they go again.  Reminds me of the time I read about how salmon are carried in trucks in order to get them up the Columbia river... or is it down?  I guess it's a two-way trip.  Sorry, fish, us smart people own the river now.  Kinda glad I'm not an engineer.
Jerry's got a tea cup with a big red stripe this time.  You know, so the fish has some room to stretch out, and cling to the rim of the glass and watch as the cat chases them.  And chase Tom does, but he doesn't seem to be giving it his full effort.  It's almost as if he's not too anxious to catch the fish!  And after the various beatings the mouse has given them, I don't blame him.  But he shows his resoluteness in a different way this time.  After bashing into the radiator, why, that crazy cat climbs right through the damn thing and crawls out the other side of it shaped like an accordion... a radiator-shaped accordion.  And by God, he was rich!  And then, after smashing into the mouse hole, why, he climbs right through that hole and follows Jerry and the fish around inside the walls.  We have to imagine that part.  I guess Tom's getting so emaciated from a lack of food that he's able to do that now.  Anyway, he pops out the other side of that mouse hole, because Jerry's got two entrances to the wall.  Tom ends up shaped like a long arch-shaped loaf of bread, but he did it.  He went into that wall at 17, and came out at 21 with a fist full of diamonds.  And by God, he was rich!!!  (still need the link?  All right, here it is....)
And so, Tom keeps chasing while holding his ridiculous new shape, so unsuitable for either long-distance running or short-distance sprinting.  Go figure.  Jerry has to put a stop to this madness, so he picks up an iron and holds it proudly.  Frankly, I can't blame him.  If I were a mouse that could lift a heavy iron, I'd be kinda proud, too!  And, indeed, Tom smashes right into it, as though it were pre-ordained somehow, but this is one iron that he's not going to crawl through and pop out the other side.  But his face is iron-shaped now!  Reminds me of that Brian Regan special we just saw.  GENIUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, Tom wasn't able to go through that iron, but he exits Stage Right in a rather gooey fashion as though he were going through the wall or the radiator again.  This time, he's heading for a gun on the mantle.  Like all crazy white people, the owners of the house keep two loaded handguns over the fireplace.  You know, in case the fire ever gets out of control.  What could possibly go wrong?  Tom aims and fires.  Now, he misses the mouse, but he does shatter the glass, thereby liberating the fish from another one of Jerry's fiendish rescue attempts.  Foodie Tom triumphs again.  And once again, Jerry notices much later than he should have that the fish is gone.  That fish needs to find new friends.
To Jerry's horror, Tom is now roasting the fish over an open fire in one of those ... you know, those things you hold a fish in when you're cooking it outdoors... do people even use those anymore?  Man, this cartoon is exhausting me!  Reviewing cartoons is a young man's game.  Anyway, the mighty mouse manages to drop a giant brown kettle over the cat, then hits the kettle with a fireplace prodder, causing the kettle to vibrate like a bell.  Incidentally, what's brown and sounds like a bell?.... oh, right, you have to pay for Python on the YouTubes... or do you?  Tee hee hee...
Well, this move bought Jerry a couple seconds, and to add more insult to injury, he's got no glass to carry the fish in this time.  Jerry heads down a long corridor.  Tom stops at the end of it.  Now, sure, Tom could just run after the mouse and fish, but he's tried that already in this picture.  Time to D.Q. Something Different... this is insane.  YouTube is insane!!!!!  Anyway, time to take a page from Heavenly Puss.  With no piano in sight, and a completely level stretch of ground, time to snap the carpet again.... AND THEY'RE OFFFF!!!!!  Jerry and Fish in the lead, but Loop in the Carpet is gaining fast.  Loop is two lengths behind, Jerry and Fish are trying to stay ahead and... oh, it was over before it began!  Jerry is down and the fish is flying through the air with the greatest of ease once again... or, actually, I should phrase it once again like this: the fish flies through the air, and where it lands we know not where.  Somewhere different, hopefully!  And... spoiler alert... HUZZAH!  Into the toaster.  Well, it's still less cruel than Two Gophers from Texas.  Arguably, not by much!  It's a quick toast, as the fish pops up after about five seconds or so, and Tom's got the fish in the bread!  His only mistake was that he took too long admiring his handiwork, giving Jerry enough time to stick Tom's tail in the wringer.  That's because Tom is clearly not a real cat.  Any time I try to tie my cat's tail to anything, well, she's biting my wrist that second, and frankly, deservedly so.  Thank goodness for me she hasn't figured out how to sever the artery yet!  Tom screams like a human and grabs on to the toaster.  Oh good!  Maybe he'll get shocked to death... nah, he and the toaster end up flat on the floor.  But the orchestra seems sympathetic to Tom's new dimensional crisis.

ACT THREE

It appears that Jerry has decided that the fish bowl is no longer a haven that is safe... duh, ya think so?  And so it's back to the hole in the wall.  Alas, Tom is ready once again!  This time he's got a steamer with locking lid.  Once the long-suffering fish is within, on with the lid and back over to the oven.  But just before that... diabolical.  The cat's a quick learner!  Tom drags a dresser over and places it in front of the mouse hole.  Boy!  Good thing this is the Third Act.  If it were the Second, it would mean that in the Third Act, Tom would either a) kill Jerry and eat the fish in peace, or b) tie Jerry up somewhere near the oven and make him watch as he finally cooks the fish and eats it.  I guess mouse meat doesn't go well with fish, as that would be the c) option.
Jerry tries to push on the obstruction in front of his mouse hole, but it's no use.  There must be another way out.  Well, mass electrification of the homes of average citizens was still relatively new, so Jerry climbs into the socket and finds his way out that way... thereby creating the premise for Shocker.  Well, not everything can spawn so many sequels and Saturday morning cartoon shows.
And so, with similar determination that the cat showed earlier, Jerry jams himself into the socket, squeezes all the way through, and finds his way to the kitchen, where the cooking is underway.  But now that victory is complete (premature actually, of course), why not take the time to dice up some more vegetables?  The ones from before found their way out of the fish bowl, and frankly just outright disappeared completely.
Now, this is the Third Act, which in cartoons usually means that it's time for the heavy explosives... a lot of 'em.  But this is a delicate exfil operation, so finesse is called for, and even though the mouse has the strength of ten men, he's only got one stick of dynamite to work with.  Now, in cartoons, dynamite sticks are typically red in nature, but again, a subtle operation, and so Jerry's stick of dynamite is called orange.  Boy, you really can get anything at that Acme store!  And so, Jerry makes the swap, trading a carrot for the orange dynamite stick.  GINIUS!!!!!  Ginius, I spells ya.
And so, in more blatant plot devices, the cat has removed the fish from the boiling water and is now sitting on it.  You know, so he can add the sliced vegetables.  Oh well, we've all been that excited before.  You're on your way to the motel to get it on with your slutty co-worker... you're bound to drop your car keys at least once.  And so, the mouse doesn't have to create a distraction or unlock and open the steamer pot himself to save the fish.  No, it's a simple swap, really: Jerry does a quick exfil of the fish and replaces said fish with Tom's own tail.  Again, a real life cat would notice this right away.  Tom quickly picks up the stick of dynamite and slices it up like he's Mario Batali or something, and he just as quickly sticks his own tail into the pot and locks the lid on it.  Well, that's how it happens, you know.  You're more likely to lock yourself out of your car if you're in a rush than, say... not in a rush.  Right, Oscar Wilde?
The marching red pain travels up Tom's tail slowly this time, apparently because it's heat-based and not, say, the usual electricity or a flood of angry neurons alerting Tom's brain that his ass has been stabbed with... whatever.  An olive fork, let's say.  Tom screams like a man in pain and starts running around.  It's assumed that Jerry and his pet fish are out of harm's way.  And in even more blatant plot devices, Tom doesn't think to unlock the steamer from his tail.  The pain's just that urgent and great... bad great, that is.  Sensing that the steamer's about to explode, it's all Tom can do to get the front door between he and the raging pot.  Tom crouches on the other side of the door, and boom.
Tom pulls on his tail and... free!  A little charred, but free!  But wait... what's that loud whistling noise?  Plus, it seems kind of windy out here on the porch.  Notice how tight the shot is on Tom and the door and the porch.  We pull back ever so slightly and... GINIUS!!!  MORE GENUIS, I TELLS YA!!!!
Also, brilliance x 2.  Everything seems okay... kinda like a relaxing Kevin Costner at the beginning of A Perfect World.  When in fact, Tom is now headed away from the Earth.  And the animators have gone to the trouble of actually animating the Earth falling away this time, and not merely relying on a single picture of the Earth and using the zoom lens to pull back or, more likely, the arm of the animation stand to raise the camera up....................

EPILOGUE

Alas, what has become of the cat is far too gruesome to show, so let's just go to the two tiny victors in this scenario.  The explosion from that one carrot-colored stick of dynamite was powerful enough to send the cat into orbit, yet the fish and mouse remain unharmed.  More plot device.  Well, that's the risk you take in comedy or, in this case, drama: it's an ever-escalating arms race between the plot holes and the vehicles you try to drive through them.  But it would seem that the fish and mouse are unharmed and, more importantly, relieved that they have removed from their world their biggest, most aggressive enemy.  It is now a time of peace, as there are no new enemies on the horizon but themselves and government agents... and the realtor and the milkman, what have you.  Thankfully, the animators are bad at drawing people.  And, why look!  The mouse is now swimming around in the dirty water with the little fish!  No more patronizing pats on the glass.  Equanimity achieved.  Still, if I were that fish, I'd try to hop on the first train out of town and get the hell away from that little bastard of a mouse.  That mouse is nothing but trouble, and a little unreliable in times when there's a life and death crisis every thirty seconds.

Good triple bill with: Fin 'n Catty and Pinknic

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

In the Navy Again, Pt. III: Braddock's Pre-venge

Ran out of time again.  Welp, I'm fresh from bombing my final, so time to get back to work.  Our next Popeye short is called Fleets of Stren'th... just wanted to make sure I was misspelling that right.

ACT ONE

It's a clash of icons as we find Popeye swabbing the deck and reading the "funny papers."  Why, I'd hardly call Superman the funny papers, and I'm not even a frothing-at-the-mouth comic book nerd!  No, even though the Fleischers did both Popeye and Superman cartoons, Superman is nothing to joke about.  Just ask Seinfeld, the Superman of stand-up comedy!  Anyway, the upper brass interrupt Popeye's work, and Popeye stands at attention after folding up the funny papers with his shoe'd feet.  Boy, you wanna talk about yer Mumblecore!  Popeye invented mumblecore, I tells ya!
And so, once again we find Popeye trying to fit in as just another cog in the giant machinery of the Navy.  But for now, gravity is on Popeye's side.  He's ordered to put a bomb into a "mosquito boat"... let's see if Wikipedia's got it... meh, close enough.  Dayamn, that's a long-ass link!  Hope it woiks.  For now, gravity is on Popeye's side, as he does that thing again where he drops the bomb onto the boat, then runs down to catch it.  Probably won't be the last time.  The time he ran down several flights of stairs to catch a piano was used once in one of them compilation cartoons, so he's done this at least twice before.  Kind of a cartoon tradition, actually.  Popeye's commanding officer is more horrified than anything.  The gravity of the sea helps Popeye try to lighten up the mood of that cranky old sea salt.  But that Bolshy great burly bastid can't help but lecture Popeye about "discipline."  This guy don't know Popeye very well, do he?  He'll probably end up pinning medals on Popeye's uniform by the end of this thing.  Gut feeling, mind you.  I don't actually know yet.
Now, as the commentary might tell you... oh wait, this one doesn't have any.  Big surprise.  But for fans of these Popeye cartoons, especially the ones from the 1950s, there's an important part in our instant case, Fleets of Stren'th, and it happens at about 1:43.  Popeye, in a rare state of nervousness, makes a gulping noise.  Make a note of this gulping noise, because I think it's the same gulping noise that is used in every '50s-era Popeye cartoon... and I mean, literally, every '50s-era Popeye cartoon.  No more time or budget for artistical touches in these things anymore.  This is the television era, where maniacs like Rod Daniel and Gene Deitch flourish and multiply.  Kinda like what YouTube's doing now!  I swear, they get away with more murder than Napster or Kazaa ever did.

ACT TWO

Worse than that, Popeye's now eating the Stooges' dust!  Popeye's C.O. gives a string of orders reminiscent of a scene from Boobs in Arms and its remake, Dizzy Pilots.  And then... boy!  That was quick!  The enemy's already attacking by air!  The filmmakers have more fun with implied obscenity.  "Blow that ..... out of the sky!" screams the C.O.  See, bombs explode when the guy swears.  So, plot-wise, this looks to be the same old thing, but I think there's maybe just enough to merit this some attention.  After all, check out this wicked visual here... is this not the inspiration for the big action sequence in Hitchcock's North by Northwest?  I think so... even though I'm probably alone on that.  That the plane makes Popeye rock back and forth is just icing on the cake... or is it?  Has the Navy finally turned Popeye into an automaton drone?
Popeye keeps standing at attention and gets rattled around some more, but in a perfect circle at least, and then... after surviving a direct hit, Popeye ends on the very tip-top of the ship's highest sail... I thought this was a battleship!  Do battleships have sails too?  Anyway, now that the deck's all chewed up, Popeye's given some room to swing a few cats.  "GET THAT PLANE!" the C.O. cries, and Popeye gets a spring in his step after that.  "Aye aye, sir!  He's as good as got!" quips Popeye, then springs into action, commandeering the skeeter boat from earlier.  Apparently, Popeye's reputation from the earlier two navy cartoons persists after all. 
At this point, the waves start to turn on Popeye.  Don't want to end this picture too quickly, now!  To make matters worse, Popeye's aim at the planes is about as good as the square-jawed supermen already firing guns on the battleship proper.  Not hitting a damn thing.  The one plane was apparently the reconnaissance plane, so it heads back to its mother carrier and waves for the other planes to attack.  They end up physically harrassing Popeye in various insulting ways.  That's right, folks... this has turned into an Adam Sandler picture.  The planes hit Popeye upon his head with their tails, they flap their rudders in Popeye's face, and the one plane uses its propellors to twist Popeye all up!  Could be worse, I suppose.  After all, there's that dude in Raiders of the Lost Ark who got ground up by that plane propellor.
And then... one of the planes scoops up Popeye's boat, just like the time that giant bird picked him up in Sindbad the Sailor.  The plane grinds up the boat with its hands... I mean, landing gear... it's a visual gag... and then, Popeye and his rubble drop into the ocean. 

ACT THREE

Popeye must be stuck in the two dimensions again.  He's stuck between a rock and a hard place, and by that I mean he's got two bombs cruising along the top of the water at him: the first one from Stage Right, the second from Stage Left.  The bombs are leaving little curly-cue trails in the water behind them that look like the frosting on Hostess cup cakes... dang, I must be hungry.  Oh, it's so spinach time... but Popeye can't open the can!  Popeye drops below the water level just before the two bombs hit each other.  After the massive ensuing explosion,... well, there's a damn good reason that we're looking at the sky and traveling upwards.  After the flying water disappears, we see Popeye flying up into the air as he does on occasion... correction: we see Popeye's pipe first, then Popeye catches up to it.  The poor guy's on the plane's turf now!  A plane starts shooting its machine gun at him... I'm surprised we haven't seen any racist caricatures of any Axis players yet.  Nope, apparently the enemy has planes that fly themselves.  Now, you could probably guess this one, but Popeye lets the machine gun fire open up this pesky spinach can, and open it does.  A quick gulp of spinach and... damn!  That same noise!  I'm telling you, darling... once they had that gulping sound, there was no turning back.  They'll probably use it on the rest of this DVD, too.  Also, there's no more peering into the crystal ball of Popeye's giant arm muscles to see the strength within.  Now Popeye morphs into the different objects himself, as spinach has given him the stren'th of twenty planes.  It's Popeye's turn to beat up the planes.  Take that, O'Doyles of the world!  ...okay, there's one pilot.  Popeye hands the enemy pilot his own damn propellor just before that Nazi bastid plummets into the ocean.
But wait!  There's a fresh crop of planes flying off that emeny carrier!  Well, after doing some fancy bomb juggling, Popeye just threw three bombs back at the planes dropping them, and now he's got one left.  What better way to end than with a bowling gag?  Popeye winds up and chucks that bomb at the oncoming planes, and they just happen to be lined up in bowling pin form.  You'll never guess what happens.  Never in a million years.

EPILOGUE

Rather than the pomp and circumcision of... circumstance of a medal ceremony, ever the populist and symbol of American interventionism, Popeye ends up sailing the beaten enemy carrier back towards land.  And yes, those are makeshift tears coming out of the "eyes" of the broken battleship, which I think are supposed to be the eyelets for the ship's anchors?  Maybe just the sweet windows to have, probably for the C.O.'s.  You're still strong to the finich, you crazy, one-eyed bastid.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Shari L. Carpenter

Alas, if you take a look at Shari's IMDb page, it might be a while before she's known for anything she's directed herself.  All those high-profile projects with Spike Lee and/or Denzel?  (sucks teeth)  Surely there's a way to get to Spielberg!  I'd try the American Gangster connection.  So, we go...

worked on American Gangster directed by Ridley Scott,
who directed Matchstick Men, produced by about twenty different people, including Robert Zemeckis
who... well, the trail runs cold after that.  But on the bright side, I didn't need my software to figure that out!  My computer's just not as "movie smart" as I am, tee hee hee.

The Next Christmas Ever

Once again it's Mockingjay this and Mockingjay that... but Jimmy Fallon's the host now!  Even Gone Girl is still hanging in there at #8, so there's only one debut this week, called The Pyramid, and my first hunch was right.  It's either the latest greatest horror pic, or it's a documentary about that long-lived game show.  I guess the national movie docket was too full around Halloween time to release all the B-grade horror pics out there waiting... ooh!  Almost forgot.  The other big news all over facebook is that a movie called Saving Christmas achieved a status that the filmmakers probably weren't hoping for: the #1 worst movie on the Internet Movie Database!!  See, The Onion?  The IMDb's not all bad!  There's useful information there!  Of course, at the wrap party, they had all the cast and crew probably vote for the movie, and either they coordinated to have everyone give the movie a zero or a one, or the cast and crew just really hated the experience of making it just that much.  Someone may put the Christ back in Christmas, but for now it's "Christ, I don't ever want to work with Kirk Cameron again!"
But it just goes to show you how tastes change, even amongst the worst movies.  I mean, for a long while now the epic From Justin to Kelly was at #1, but alas, it's risen to a mediocre 23rd on the list.  Plus, it's got kitsch value, as it's Kelly Clarkson's proverbial Crossroads.  Then of course, there's the Ed Wood-ish Manos: The Hands of Fate that was at #1 for a while, but people want a fresh bad movie, not something even your father never watched.  Then there's The Shawshank Redemption... oh, right, that's at the other end of the spectrum.  Man, I can only hope that my stay in prison is just as cinematic.