Auteur Watch - Peter and Philip Kaufman

Hard to say which is worse. Philip clearly should be billed first, but by being billed second here, he gets his whole name smooshed together as two words. Hard to say. Just as long as I don't mention his age, I guess. Still, he's done more at 75 than son Peter's done at 51. Ouch. But let's go back to the beginning and try to divine with our wishbone-shaped stick and see where the water is in terms of Favourite Decade here. Maybe it can be done.
Well, of course there's the 60s, the decade of the Beatles, and all those other things Billy Joel references in perhaps his single greatest song, We Didn't Start the Fire. Philip started young with Goldstein. Damn! The link to the Onion's review of it doesn't work. Did they like it? Or think it was pretentious, disagreeing with Jean Renoir, no less? Phil experienced a sophomore slump of sorts with Fearless Frank, in my humble opine anyway. It had a small budget! Where was it mostly filmed, the Kaufman mansion? I did love the performance by Severn Darden, especially as Claude, his evil twin. Just think of Fearless Frank as the Cliff's Notes for basically EVERY comic book known to man.
Or perhaps it was the 70s that are Phil's phavourite decade? Afros and disco, pimp outfits and platform shoes with goldfish in the heels. Disco mirror balls everywhere. Or as Moe Syzlak might say, it's like the 60s threw up, and the throw-up became the 70s! Or perhaps, the 60s ate too many pastel colors... you get the idea. Phil tackled Jesse James, The Thing, and The Body Snatchers in the 70s, so clearly still well under the radar. How a full frontally nude Brooke Adams gets only a PG rating is beyond me. I guess the MPAA blinked or something and missed it. Similar antics with his The Right Stuff in the 80s if I remember correctly, with the feather dancer. But since it was done artfully, the PG remains.
And then, the go go 80s. The Me Decade. Blow everywhere. Your grandfather was President, and the kids were partying whenever he nodded off... which was often. Fortunately for Phil Kaufman, he ended up in the right place at the right time. For you cinema SAT-types, Phil is to Raiders of the Lost Ark what Sam Simon is to the Simpsons. I guess Kauf's got a great lawyer or something, because he's still getting credit to this day... even for those crappy Lego Indiana Jones things. I like Legos as much as the next guy, but WTF, dude! I have yet to sit through a Lego ANYTHING featurette. Started to watch the Lego Monty Python and the Holy Grail... don't get it. I just don't get it. Anyway, all that directing must've tuckered ol' Phil Kaufman out... a lot. His gestation period's longer than even Martin Breast, almost! I know I misspelled it, but aren't misspellings rampant enough on the web these days? And so, 1988 gave us The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Oh, if only we all could live like Daniel-Day Lewis and Lena Olin in that movie. Piggybacking on that theme, we got 1990's Henry and June. Ol' Phil's responsible for more MPAA changes than anyone! Indiana Jones 2 created the PG-13, Henry & June creates NC-17... I guess that's about it. 1993 gave us Rising Sun, and Phil takes another long break, this time for 7 years. I guess the 90s weren't as good to him as the 80s. That's what you get for crossing Michael Crichton's path... at least, back then.
So, are the 2000s a good decade for P. Kauf? We got Quills, not bad. Then, he steps into a big pile of Judd with Twisted. Well, hopefully the set was sort of fun. I'm guessing that the joy in the making of the movie probably doesn't show up on the screen... oh, dear. It's made it into the Onion's "Commentary Tracks of the Damned" Hall of Shame. Not good. And yet, they priase and badmouth Kaufman at the same time. His talents were wasted, but he does the commentary so SCREW 'IM! Hang on while I read this... Oh, they're so mean. But maybe it's a good lesson for Kaufman: that's what you get for crossing Ashley Judd's path. Now and forever.
Or perhaps the 2010s will be the best Kaufman decade of all. An Ernest Hemingway biopic! Not the sort of thing he would tackle, but why not. Too bad he didn't do Norman Mailer as well. Great Costco 3-Pack: Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, and Hemingway. Well, either Mailer or Bukowski. A 3-Pack of manly authors! I slapped her across the face. Hard. She shed a tear. And then, she kissed me. Hard. And the rain came down. The phone kept ringing, and we made sweet, geriatric love. Old! So very old...
Oh, and son Peter directed a thing: China: The Wild East. Well, if it's not a neo-Western with Jackie Chan, then I don't wanna see it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just what's going ON down at that IMDb, anyway?... Are you always this nice?

Well, apparently, what's going on is that there's a tie for first place between the Smurfs and Cowboys & Aliens. I'm shocked! I could've sworn The Onion was going to give Favreau a free pass. I mean... he's Favreau! Vince Vaughn's friend? The two Iron Mans? Will Ferrell in Elf? Bueller? ... ah, people are over-using "Bueller" these days in polite conversation. Raja Gosnell strikes again, as The Onion noted, but he can't keep up his streak forever. The new, non-nepotist generation's taking over Hollywood! Monsters. Another Earth. They're lean and hungry and wanna work, build up the ol' resumé, Raj. As for Cowboys & Aliens, well, I'm told the winner goes on to play the winner of Monsters vs. Aliens in the finals. Wouldn't that be weird if it were an Aliens v. Aliens lineup? It's probably going to be Monsters v. Cowboys. They'll team up to play the winner of Alien v. Predator. Wait, the v. means a lawsuit. Get Dersh!
The other debut this week is Crazy Stupid Love. Or, rather, I guess it's spelled like Eat, Pray, Love, with commas after each word. But even though it's trying to ride Julia Roberts' coattails, I think it's also trying to make fun of them, but perhaps they're both not so different. Crazy self-obsessed white people at the center of their own limitless universe. Oh, God, let me join you! I'll give up movie criticism forever! Still, just once I'd like to see Steve Carell go back to his ol' Daily Show stomping grounds and not kiss Stewart's ass so hard. Oh, "I owe everything to you..." Gimme a break.

La Cage aux Stooge

Somewhere in France... the very idea. Stooge time again, my nine followers! And we're just in luck, because Curly's nyuk nyuk seems like it's finally starting to mature here in Wee Wee Monsieur, the next Stooge film in my cinematic death march. But it starts out pleasantly enough with the boys singing a traditional French song about lollipops. But, don't worry. The song ends with an abrupt transition back into the violent world of Stooge slapstick. I could describe it, but it just wouldn't do it justice. As usual, the boys find themselves as struggling artists in an indifferent world. Literally, this time. We've missed the part where they're running from the cops and wind up in an art school. They've already graduated and are practicing in the world: Curly the Dali-esque abstract painter, Moe the sculptor, and Larry the piano man. The boys are behind on the rent, and after they rob a street vendor from above with a fishing pole, the landlord comes a'knocking. He looks familiar, like the exasperated director in Movie Maniacs. Can someone else check on that for me, please? Needles to say, their meeting with the landlord ends with the boys fleeing their studio apartment, and running from a cop. They've already chalked up two charges of aggravated assault with watermelon shoes. Same vendor, different crime.
Act Two? The boys rip off Beau Hunks and The Flying Deuces by entering into the French Foreign Legion. To be fair, it's not because of a broken heart. In fact, I can't remember off the top of my head a single Stooge film where they get a broken heart over a dame. They're usually married and get the old one last chance, usually to find a job. But back to the instant case. Spoiler alert: we find out that Curly's last name is Van Dyke. Soon after, Act Two begins in earnest with the boys in uniform in the desert. Their assignment: guard Captain Gorgonzola. Must be an Italian fellow. Bud Jamison is their commanding officer, sans French accent. I guess he didn't have time to prepare. He can do old frontiersman accent, Vulgarian accent... go figure. Anyway, we come to the part that's padded out for time. The boys pace to and fro outside the Captain's tent. This part's padded out for time, and Curly's low man again, getting hit in the head with swiveling rifles and what not, but to be fair, in a brief instant when the boys are far from the tent facing the other way, the Captain gets kidnapped. The Stooges will face the firing squad for this... but they get one chance to save the Captain.
Act 2, part 2. The Stooges have a brilliant idea on how to get in to the evil Arab compound where the Captain's being held. No, they don't do the ol' "You know my friend Achmed! Fella what walks like this..." They pull up in a sled dressed as three Santa Clauses! Duh! The boys are in. I know, I know, but there's a long, proud tradition of Arabs being the bad guys in movies. I say why fight it? It's time to just accept it. Jack Shaheen be damned. Besides, who forced Sayed Badreya to be in Shallow Hal and Zohan? Egg-zactly... Ah, putting my Politics 101 class to work. Anyway, to rub more salt into ethnic wounds, Vernon Dent plays the chief Bad Arab who tries to extract information from the beleaguered Captain. The Stooges find an open window. Moe and Larry go in first. You'll just never guess what happens next. More stalling for time. Anyway, they did good post dubbing of Curly saying "How am I gonna get up there?" I dare say they did some ad-libbing after the window episode. They finally get into the house and stumble upon... what else? The palace harem, of course! Curly gets to say yet again "I'll take the black and tan." He says that an awful lot, and I didn't keep careful enough track of when this happens, unfortunately. Some critic I'm turning out to be. Moe and Larry run off, and we're left to follow Curly's girl troubles. He's besieged first by an ugly chick, and then by an angel with a Brooklyn accent. I guess the bloom's off the harem rose, so to speak, but hey, that's probably the way it is in your typical workaday harem. Truth in advertising. Larry runs afoul of a comedy pineapple. Curly gets blindfolded and has to catch his girl. Guess what happens.
Act Three. The Stooges run away, ending up in the harem clothing closet... whatever it's called. The Captain is invited to partake of the harem. Does comedy ensue? Duh!! The ladies perform a dance. The Stooges bump heads and fall down a lot. More celluloid padding. I guess I should mention that the boys are dressed as harem girls. They eventually knock out Vernon Dent and his black bodyguard. At least the black dude didn't have to do any bug-eyed stuff. They grab the Captain and flee the palace. But there's still some time left to kill, so they end up in the lion's den. This being the discount palace, there's just one lion. They scare off the lion at first, but the lion returns. The boys run away, and the lion walks off screen as soon as the boys have left the frame. This was before computer effects, you know. Then, we hear a bunch of commotion. Will the lion end up eating the Three Stooges and their captain? Will the lion emerge dressed as a harem girl, or as the Captain? I guess you're just going to have to see for yourself.
On second thought, this isn't one of my favorites, and probably never will be, so here's the ending: the lion walks out, towing a giant carriage with the stooges and captain riding on it. Poor lion.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Charlie and Donald Kaufman

Oh, right. They're not real. Human Nature will be vindicated as the classic it is!!! You'll see!!!!

Captain Remake

It was the 40s, baby. Classic cars, fast-talking dames, what's his face on the radio. If you remember the 40s, you weren't there, George. Something like that. Well, enjoy Captain America while you can. It's going to be remade soon enough. Guess the Harry Potter bunch isn't playing ball here. Number 2 after only one week? ...and you heard it here first! Remember that!!! Meanwhile, Transformers 3 has crossed the all-important 300 million barrier. It'll turn a profit some time around 2019. But even more exciting than that! The IMDb gurus screwed up again! I don't think 2009's Friends (With Benefits) wowed the American box office all of a sudden. Who wants to see a bunch of middle-aged French people? Or for that matter, French people around the age of Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis? No, we want 2011's Friends With Benefits. Or so the web ad geniuses would have us believe. Oh, Richard Jenkins. It seems that Oscar nominations lead to this kind of thing. After all, Natalie Portman did No Strings Attached... and she WON an Oscar! I thought Jerry and Elaine already laid these issues to rest, so to speak.
But I gotta give one last shout out to Midnight in Paris. It's hanging in there, man! Even if it's just lowly #10. If you track it on Variety, it might look even more persistent, but who's got time for that except the man himself? I doubt if Larry Crowne will come back, though. Just sayin'.

THX 1938

Boy, there just aren't enough hours in the day, but I'm almost ready for another week of movie reviewing work. And it's time for the next Stooge flick: Termites of 1938. And at the time this one was made, there was no more reliable comedy crutch than the wacky dumb black person. Unfortunately, the Stooges relied on this crutch quite a bit. Why, in one Stooge short, Larry goes "What's the idea, porter?" Different times. Turns out it was Moe with ink on his face... I think that was the one where the boys invent a stupid fly catcher... one thing leads to another, and Moe ends up taking an inkwell in the face.
But back to our instant case. Listen to Wikipedia; they know all. This time, the boys find themselves reincarnated as exterminators once again. At 2:39, Curly uses his regular voice. Love it when he does that. Meanwhile, a high society type is in need for an escort to a fancy party. At least she didn't need three. Such a blatant plot device. But back to the three knuckleheads. They're in the midst of an R&D session at the exterminator shop. Larry's the old-fashioned rat trap man, while Moe's more of the Rube Goldberg school... actually, when you get right down to it, the Three Stooges are a walking, talking Rube Goldbergian-type noun. The boys run afoul of the cutest mouse in movie history, second only to that mouse from The Green Mile. Almost forgot about that little guy. He gets the last shot of that pic, if I recall correctly. The other three hours of the film are kind of a blur. Is this not the role Sam Rockwell will be remembered for? I'll bet he didn't REALLY have a mouthful of his own excrement. Anyway, the Stooges' million dollar rat trap misfires, Moe loses his hearing, takes a phone call, makes some wonderful miscommunications, and boom! The boys enter high society. Well, even high society folk need to laugh sometimes. Even in Laurel Canyon! But before that happens, we see the dumb maid get the wrong number out of the telephone book. To be fair, she was just one off. Also, the crack the snooty white woman made about discrimination kind of freaked her out. A lot. Gee, this setup seems awfully familiar. Oh well.
Act two. The boys arrive in the usual disgraceful jalopy. Why, they end up perturbing the help! The nerve. They further make asses of themselves during their big introduction, but for some reason the people think they're college boys. Some of the lessons from Hoi Polloi stuck, apparently. Dinner is announced, and the Stooges are first to the big fancy dinner table. They manage to not steal the silverware, but Curly makes a peculiar observation: "Why so many? All you need is a knife!" Remember that, as it just might come up later on. Professor Moe explains the silverware situation. There's four spoons and three forks. Moe says "You start at the far end and work your way down." Curly, ever the helpful Stooge, gives Moe half of his napkin by ripping his in half. It's going to be a long, dark night of the soul. Meanwhile, Bud Jamison gets it into his deluded head that he must emulate the Stooges' behaviour, as they seem to be the toast of this gala affair. Let the emulation commence! Curly throws peas up into the air, catching them in his mouth. Bud does likewise. Everyone else does too! Well, human see, human do. Mashed potatoes are placed on the end of a knife, which is then dipped in peas. Bud does the same, as does everyone else... or did I merely dream it? The stakes are raised by Moe, who proceeds to eat a Cornish game hen with corn cob holders. The other Stooges do likewise, Bud does likewise, and the rest of the blooming idiots at the table do likewise. I double-checked this one, and it does happen.

Music is playing. Normally, incidental music is absent from a Stooge film, but there's an orchestra in the staircase area of the house. Curly thinks the flute player's trying to catch mice. The Micro-Phonies conceit is bourne. They play the song Curly played so famously in Dutiful but Dumb. Must be a public domain number or something. Without realizing it, Moe grabs a saw instead of a bow and ends up sawing his cello in half. At least he stopped at his legs. Mice emerge from the freshly-sawed cello. Everyone panics. Curly does some breakdancing, lands on his tummy, making a loud drum noise in the process. It's Bedlam with a capital b, I tells ya. Curly does a 360 on the floor, apparently the first in filmed Stooge history.

Act Three. The boys get to work looking for pests to exterminate. They don't start with themselves. Larry and Curly team up. Larry's got a very, very large drill. Curly's on insecticide duty. Moe runs afoul of a rug. Muriel ends up getting a metal drill bit in the ass, and her head emerges through the staircase. It's too wonderful, I tells ya. The big finale: the boys are done in when the man of the house returns and throws a lit gopher bomb at their escaping car. The Stooges theme is played at the end of the film almost in its entirety; almost unheard of in Stooge etiquette. They must have had a different sound editor that week.
Well, this is a little bit like A Plumbing We Will Go. The same high society dame is in both, anyway. Somehow, I don't see Termites of 1938 becoming part of my regular Stooge viewing, but who knows? Death before Besser!!!!

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Jon and Jake Kasdan

For some reason, I've always heard that show business is something you wouldn't want to bring your kids into. That must've been your father's saying, because the opposite seems to be the norm these days! As long as you keep your nose clean, it seems like a fine way to pass the time. Take the Kasdan boys, for example. The 2000s seem to be working out better for them than for dad, that's for sure! I'm surprised they keep Dreamcatcher on their résumé... oh, right. That's just Jonathan. Well, he's still growing his sea legs as a director, but as an actor, whoa! Look out. Edward Norton, Sam Rockwell... does he not deserve to stand in this company? But I will confess that apparently, on the IMDb, you can see the whole movie of Slackers on something called Crackle. Maybe you'll have better luck with it, but it just made my computer freeze for about three minutes. Yeah! I know! What nerve. For that and other reasons, I'm going to skip the free showing of Slackers. It's not the 1991 Richard Linklater classic, incidentally, but the 2002 raunch fest directed by... whoever. Dewey Cox... I mean, Dewey Nicks. Guess he was too real for Hollywood. He's certainly no Walt Becker or Brian Levant, God forbid.
But these Kasdan boys, God bless 'em, I think they're going to be just fine. Maybe they can teach ol' Larry a little something about connecting with audiences in these 2010s of new. Compare Roger Ebert's scathing review of Bad Teacher, in which he refers to un-sympathetic characters and slipshod editing... and compare it to its box office performance. Which critic are you going to ultimately listen to?

Carmageddon begins...

...oh, right. And Harry Potter 7B has a bigger opening than The Dark Knight, according to the headlines. Boy, did I pick the wrong industry to be in... before. And now. Why critique the movies when you can make a ton making them? But where do we go from here? The filmmakers and special effects people have climbed the summit, achieving effects the world has never seen before, and in 3-D, no less! Where are the storytellers of tomorrow to provide the heart? As for J.K. Rowling, well, now that she's not afraid to admit she's a chick, it's back to the short stories she middled around with before striking paydirt. When she finds the world's not as eager to embrace her for who she really is, it's back to the Harry Potter well. I think it's time once again to prove F. Scott Fitzgerald wrong... at least, his maxim that "there are no second acts in American lives" only applies to the young Americas. In ye olde moderne Britaine, there's either less or more room for life re-invention. How about Harry Potter as a bored young man? Harry Potter as a grunge rocker? Give the AARP-types some hope: why not go with Harry Potter as an 80-year old man. The ol' wand ain't what it used to be, and it tends to spark erratically, but he can still talk to snakes with the best of 'em! Something like that. This world and the next are your oysters on the half-shell, J.K. You'll almost do as well as Ayn Rand has done; too bad the cultural and scientific elites will never take you as seriously.
Meanwhile, the days of Jurassic Park 2 and X-Men 5 are far, far behind us. There's a little light left for other box office saplings to take root! The beloved Winnie the Pooh gets a glorious reboot. I still refuse to believe that Jim Cummings can do both Winnie and Tigger and do them justice, compared to... whoever did them before. The guy is a vocal dynamo, no question. Damn long resume. Longer probably than Homer or Frank Welker or any of those other ... uniquely Hollywood creatures. I was going to be mean and call them losers. I'm still waiting for someone to post and tell me "What a sad, petty person you are." That would probably do it! It depends on who you talk about, I've found, whether it's Naomi Watts or Mary Lambert. Usually it's the more obscure person that draws the greater ire... TV's Craig Ferguson as Owl? Good Lord. Does he get to say that in the movie? I think he should! "Hi! I'm TV's Craig Ferguson as Owl! Time for my Michael Caine impression! And check this out! Me dinosaur puppit!"
Sterling Holloway and Paul Winchell! Winnie and Tigger of old, respectively. I thought I'd never find it. Well, the web is a big place. Even the IMDb by itself is pretty damn unwieldly. Damn cloud computing. You won't be able to hang on to Pixar forever, Disney!

The Three Stooges' "One Week"

Yeah, isn't Buster Keaton's 'One Week' a classic? Some might call it epic. Some may even go so far as to brand it iconic; personally, I'm getting tired of the word 'iconic' and its chronic overusage on the web. Besides, icons like Keaton are only allowed to have one iconic film, and any film buff worth his weight in salt will tell you that it's when he played "Bwana" in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. Gumby did the title sequence! The point being is that the Stooges ripped off a lot of their fellow comedians, but I suppose history and DVD sales have been all too forgiving. And besides! The haircuts were definitely original. So let's dive back into The Sitter Downers, in which the One Week formula is given the "modern" touch of a sit-down strike, combined with their trademark violent sense of "humour."
We start innocently enough with a ribald introductory "Preface" title card, as was common with most Laurel and Hardy shorts. We see the boys emerge from a nondescript flower shop, and each gets a bouquet of flowers. Even the dog's got a flower in its mouth. We pause on the dog to wait for the audience laugh. They then go to get the car out of the shop. This sequence is too good to spoil, so you're just going to have to see it for yourself. God bless you, 5150Daruis, whoever and wherever you are! I'm just glad the ASPCA hasn't watched this movie, that's all I'm saying. The boys arrive at the place where they're going to use the flowers: their sweethearts' home. It doesn't matter so much what their sweethearts' names are. Just know that they rhyme. Sorry: SPOILER ALERT! The Stooges propose marriage. The father refuses, and lands a nice right hook on Moe's kisser with the kitchen door. The great elocutor of his time, James C. Morton, plays the long suffering father. The idea of a sit-down strike is bourne. The idea of Curly sitting on a comedy pin cushion is also introduced. It eventually happens, of course, and the film is padded out to length by Moe and Larry extracting pins from Curly's ass, one painful one at a time. Curly shares his anguish by using Father in Law's ears to hang on to. Why not, I say!
The local paper, scraping the bottom of the barrel for a front page story, covers the Stooges' matrimony-based sit down strike. A compassionate nation feels the boys' pain and sends fan mail to Morton's home. Amongst the fan mail is an offer for a lot once the boys get married, and an offer for a free house kit... much like the one in One Week!!! I'm just sayin'. The exasperated father calls the governor, but to no avail. A Justice of the Peace happens to be in the home, and the father caves. The boys are getting married. But who's going to marry who? To show what props the girls are in this film, their name pins are placed in a hat and the boys draw lots. Larry gets the fat chick. Ah, gone are the days when she was pining for a boyfriend.
Act Two: the boys arrive on the back of a truck with their wives and lumber for the house in tow. The truck stops calmly so they don't comically fall off the truck. They find out that they have to build the house themselves. The second sit-down strike is bourne. At the end of Pt. 1 on YouTube, the truck driver gets a nasty bump on the head as it drives off, rudely and loudly dumping its load of lumber. The boys' hats fall off the pile, for Gawd's sake! Cut to the next scene, and the boys are having a sit-down strike on top of a sad-looking structure that I hope is not supposed to be their house. The wives tell them to come down. The boys refuse. The fat one gets them down by knocking down part of the structure. The boys' stunt doubles fall down, then get right back up. Damn, do they take a licking and ask for seconds. The fat girl gets a laugh by swinging a piece of lumber to hit the boys with, but ends up hitting the two other wives instead.
The boys get to work. Moe ends up chasing Larry, and the ol' "ruining wet cement" recurring gag is set up. Think of the cement as the glass doors that keep getting broken in Men in Black. Another recurring gag is set up in this chase sequence: Larry runs around a comically large pile of lumber. Will it eventually fall over on one or more of the Stooges? I'll give you a hint. No. What are you, crazy? It's not funny if a Stooge is killed! Just when they get hurt real bad. Sorry, SPOILER ALERT. Anyway, sound analysis time. Maybe it's not this way on the DVD, but Curly's comic whining from 1:37 to 1:42 in Pt. 2 gets repeated immediately afterward, at about 1:44 to 1:49! Damn you, OU812-Dronius!!! Larry takes a chance to exploit Moe's incapacity, but not for long, and the chase continues, going by the cement a third time, this time with the wives close behind. The cement gag rears its ugly head after a stunt worthy of Rube Goldberg... okay, maybe a tenth of a Rube Goldberg.
Act Three: Curly's Dilemma. Curly wakes from his barrel-induced slumber, and chops his way out of the cement with a tiny axe. Just go with it. He emerges with two large concrete shoes. Meanwhile, the house looks even shittier than ever. Curly apparently accidentally burned the blueprint, as Moe explains to Larry. Larry's probably not helping matters much, as he's set himself to the hard task of sawing all the lumber which, according to him, is all too long. The Stooges always help out a fellow Stooge, and Moe tries to get the concrete off Curly's feet. Eventually, holes are bored into the concrete, and dynamite inserted. And then, an explosion! We see a piece of concrete fall into a bucket of water. Seinfeld/CYE fans, take note: there are no small details. Moe and Larry think Curly's dead: time for the old "he owed me a dollar" gag. The wives gather around the smoldering crater. Curly yells from a tall tree: forget about that dollar. For comedic reasons, Curly's new bride tells him to get out of that tree. She grabs a tall piece of lumber and starts pushing it into his grill. Eventually, he falls out of the tree and lands on his new bride! Fortunately, this is not real life, and she's not dead, but she was knocked unconscious by about 400 pounds of falling Stooge. I'm including acceleration into the weight for good measure. Enter the bucket of water from before, and ... yup! She gets hit with water AND a chunk of concrete. Genius. This is probably one of the reasons I haven't seen this one a million times. Just not fanciful enough.
EPILOGUE. The house is finished. And since this is a comedy, we find it to be a comedic work of art, on a par with the house built for Ned Flanders by all of Springfield after the big hurricane... I forget which episode. Classic line: those aren't steps, those are shelves! The fat chick finds fault with a lode-bearing post, gives it a good tug, and down comes the house. Sigh. So much effort put into five seconds of film.

Good double bill with: Pardon my Backfire. Note the age disparity between the old Stooges and their young brides-to-be.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Lawrence and Mark Kasdan

What a wild ride it's been. And just as Bob Zemeckis hung around the set of Close Encounters like a pest, so must have Lawrence Kasdan been like a third wheel to George Lucas, but it paid off! Even better than David Lynch who was going to be saddled with the untidy duty of directing Return of the Jedi! Why, no one remembers who did that!
I have an unfair advantage here, as I watched the Encore "The Directors" special about Kasdan, so I'm going to go ahead and say that it was the 80s that was his favorite decade. He was young, dumb and full of... hope for his ceiling-less future! Hits, bombs, the guy can do no wrong! He even got a purple mohawk while he was directing Body Heat. You know, just because he could. He didn't go as far as Lee Tamahori wearing fishnet stockings, but it was pretty radical at the time. He almost got thrown off the studio lot a couple times. But once he sat in that director's chair, it just felt too good, and he's been there ever since.
Then it was the go-go 90s. What a sad state of affairs it is when Grand Canyon is more beloved than Boyz 'n the Hood... or is it? I wouldn't know. But I do know that John Singleton seems to have steered very, very clear of BntH-type territory lately. Kasdan was part of the great screenplay purge of 1992. I guess the studio had to clear their books or something. Trespass, Toys, The Bodyguard, all those 25-year old screenplays written by now-famous directors... they all had to go, but Trespass and The Bodyguard would be handled by different directors instead. Kasdan tried to recapture that Dances with Wolves magic with Kevin Costner and Wyatt Earp. I guess Costner wanted part of it as well. They should've gone the HBO miniseries route, but warmer heads prevailed. What a sad state of affairs it is when Tombstone is the... you get the idea. And once you make a film like Wyatt Earp, sometimes you just want to do a simple film like French Kiss... I assume, I sure wouldn't know how that works. And then, once you do a film like French Kiss, you take a break for 4 years to write your Ph.D. dissertation, or the filmic equivalent: the Anti-Grand Canyon, Mumford. Was I the only one who liked that movie? Then I'll move on.
The 2000s were bad for a lot of people, and I'm assuming for Kasdan as well. He thought he was doing America's Next Top Shawskank Redemption, but he drank too much of the Stephen King Kool-Aid, I'm afraid. I've beaten this dead horse before, but there's two Stephen Kings. There's the Shawshank Redemption Stephen King... and then there's everything else: Graveyard Shift, Pet Sematary, Christine, what have you. All the stuff Rob Reiner didn't do, basically. That's where Dreamcatcher comes in. But it makes a nice commentary on the horror that was the Dubya decade. Everyone will know that Dubya tried to make Iraq eat a dog turd... someday. We're too busy trying to dig our way out of this recession to care.
Oh, and Lawrence has a brother, Mark. Poor guy. Got cut out of Silverado, and swore he'd never work with Larry again. But he decides to mend the fences and go back to work with his bro. On what? Dreamcatcher! Well, that tears it. See you in another 18 years, if at all!!!

Horrible Titles

Welp, as much of a sign as Transformers 3 is of the downfall of our culture, the end of literacy, what have you... some people just can't get enough! And I don't think it's the same people who buy Ann Coulter's books in bulk to get them onto the prestigious New York Times Best Seller list... maybe it'd be cheaper for Pat Robertson to just come up with his own best seller list. Or is that defeating the purpose? Of course, Transformers isn't making Dark Knight money or Spider Man 2 money, as in they're not counting the number of hours it took for it to get to 100 million, 200 million, etc. Still, it'll break even in a month or two, that's the bottom line. Meanwhile, at #2, it's Horrible Bosses. For Kevin Spacey, it's pure profit. Swimming with Sharks 2, if you will. So been there done that. I'm assuming Jamie Foxx is at the point in his career where, when someone asks him why we don't have a Wanda movie, even HE goes "That's just not a good idea." Mostly to rub it in Keenen Ivory Wayans' face. As for the title of Horrible Bosses, I can see the DVD documentary now: either the producer or director's going to say "Well, we were trying to think of a title, so we started with the premise of the film. It's a comedy about horrible bosses, so one of the writers put 'Untitled Mean Bosses Comedy' on the script. Then it got changed to 'Horrible Bosses' after we met with the copyright lawyers and... I dunno! It just kinda stuck!" And stick it will, especially in the Japanese market. At the big premiere, no one could tell Jason Bateman and Jason Sudeikis apart. I thought Sudeikis was a comedian! Was this not the perfect opportunity for him to play a horrible boss? Make it like his "Two A-holes" character? Oh no, he's still got to be the cool leading man. He's got a few good years left to do it, too, so might as well live them up, am I right?
In other cool news, the latest Untitled Chris Farley... Kevin James Film debuts at #3. At least Nick Bakay's found a niche other than at the sports commentary trough. Still... I hope he's holding his nose a bit. Zookeeper of course was filmed on crappy looking digital video tape, and somehow that's the perfect medium for it. I hope TGI Friday's goes out of business. And that's it for this week's debuts, so I... am... outta here.

Three Men and a Lame Horse

This isn't one I've seen a million times, but maybe it's time to start, who knows? We start with an establishment with a good comedy name: The Flounder Inn. Priceless. Technically, it's just a restaurant, but never mind. It was the Depression, baby. Everything was an inn. Except Bob Dole's house, of course. The very idea! They had to take in boarders! Then the Democrats had to go to war with Germany and all... but that's a later Stooge film.

PART ONE

We see Curly cooking in the kitchen. Usually not a good sign, but he always dresses the part at least. He's got that big white hat, so he must be a cook. He cuts a potato with a real knife. The knife isn't used for a gag in the scene. Curly makes chicken soup by pouring hot water onto a cooked chicken, and into a bowl. I hope this was a bad chicken soup recipe by Depression-Era standards. For that matter, I hope the whole restaurant was. I mean, inn. But Larry gets his share of the fun. He rings up a fat man's bill by looking at the stains on his tie and on the inside of his coat. Larry asks the customer his opinion of the meal. It's not glowing, to say the least. I thought that fat man would at least give kudos to the custard pie, but really, it's not good to encourage a Stooge to stay employed as a cook for too long. Larry tries to stay upbeat, and instructs the man to tell all his friends about the restaurant. Larry takes the coins from the man, and puts all of them into the till... because Moe's there, watching. This is big-time character development for Larry. Why, second to He Cooked His Goose, this may be the most Larry-rific Stooge short of all!
This one has some great scripting in it. The fat man and Larry all talk about the same menu items, and Moe asks a particularly poetic question. Larry says, "Why did we get into the restaurant business, anyway?" Moe replies, "Why don't catfish have kittens?" Now, I'm no marine biologist ... man, they'll give just about anything a Wikipedia page these days... but I think they're called 'smolts.' Meanwhile, Curly keeps eating peanuts at every available opportunity. This pays off later... sort of.
Damn, I'm getting hungry. Curly also cuts off the sole of a boot and cooks it. He sifts some flour on it, and the camera dollies in on him to accentuate the horror of it all. You know, this episode reminds me of a pizza place I used to live near in Seattle. It was called Andre's, and I ordered a slice. The crust was decent enough, but it looked like something I could make. It had one thin layer of cheddar on it. Looked like the bastard child of one of those pizza recipes on the back of a Chef Boyardee can. Now, I can't read people too good, but I got the feeling that Andre either a) knew the pizza was sh... not that good, or b) just didn't care anymore. He was close to retirement age. It's a sushi place now. As far as I know. Haven't been to that corner of Seattle in a while.
Anyway, back to the important comedy proceedings at hand. I want to get this over with while it's fresh, and I don't want to cost the state of Florida any more than they've already spent on this. The peanut gag is further compounded by the fact that there are trays of mints, peanuts and hot chili peppers by the cash register. One unfortunate white guy tries some peppers. Cut to the next scene, where he lets go of a mouthful of cigarette smoke, pretending he burnt his mouth. Not bad. He grabs the nearest thingamajig of water and starts chugging... and THAT'S the very sound effect in Super 8 I was talking about! Somebody get on that right away! The guy gets to do it again in the scene, so that's TWO mouthfuls of smoke for one pepper. Not bad. The other gentleman with him seems vaguely Mexican, and has a generous helping of the hot peppers. See also: Mexican Joyride with Daffy Duck. Ol' Art Davis must've remembered this film... or maybe it's just such a universal gag. If they were savvy businessmen, they'd charge an arm and a leg for the water.
Enter Act Two: Because of budget constraints, the bad guys that set the plot in motion are customers of the Stooges. They do the dog as a hot dog gag... or at least the good half of it. For the whole half, see Malice in the Palace. At 5:28, Curly yells at a dog that's trying to steal all the weiners, and he uses his REAL VOICE! Frankly, it's unsettling, but I can't get enough of it. One of the bad guys gets a big laugh when he says "Never mind that hot dog," but screw it. He's the bad guy. Doesn't deserve it. The conceit is bourne: the bad guys will sell off their bad horse to the Stooges in exchange for the restaurant. Moe goes three rounds with the swinging doors and handily loses. As the Stooges leave, they try to take some stuff with them. Curly tries in vain to make off with his beloved tin of peanuts, but ends up spilling them. The two bad guys are ruthless businessmen and see through the Stooges' pathetic attempts to cut and run. But Curly manages to make off with some peanuts from the bins next to the cash register and... yup, you saw it coming a mile away.

PART TWO

The Stooges go to meet their horse. It's one of those comedy horses with a bowed back. Only Curly seems to care about the horse's welfare. Curly is ordered to go and walk the horse around the track. Moe and Larry look for a clock to time the horse. There's one in their suitcase. Now, for all you guys out there, Moe and Larry show us all how to empty a suitcase. I mean, REALLY empty it! Proper like. And of course, the seemingly simple act of taking a clock out of a suitcase just can't be simple in a Stooge film. Larry goes for the gusto by saying "How time flies!" A face with an unruly mop of hair on it just begging to be slapped, if ever there was one.
Now for more complex plotting. Curly goes for some of those "peanuts" in his jacket pocket. He's got a big handful of the hot pepperinos in his hand. The horse goes to eat them. The horse's mouth burns up. Apparently, it was legal at the time for horses to smoke cigars. The horse runs off at less than 12 frames per second to find a source of water. The Stooges move slowly to compensate. Moe then eats some of the peppers. Now, for all you germophobes out there, let me repeat that... The horse just ate peppers out of Curly's hand. Moe then eats some of those same peppers. Then Curly after that. And I thought Pink Flamingos was bad. Larry doesn't have his "pepper run" moment, but he perhaps does it one better. Moe, in anger, of course, shoves a big handful of peppers into Larry's mouth. Larry screams for water... just like that other one about the big French clothing shop inheritance! Anyway, Larry looks for water, but Moe, Curly and the horse have already emptied the nearest trough of water. Larry grabs a big jug of something and starts chugging. Larry screams, "It's kerosene!!!" The horse has a strangely anthropomorphic laugh over it. Frankly, I was a little insulted at the time that Larry didn't spit fire after drinking kerosene, but sometimes you shouldn't have it all. And on top of that, it was the Depression, you know!
Act Three. The day of the big race approaches. Larry further pads his part, as he's the jockey who will ride Thunderbolt to victory... maybe. I guess I forgot to mention that. The horse is named Thunderbolt. Now, the simple act of getting onto a horse is not so simple in a Stooge film. Moe and Curly attempt to throw Larry up onto the horse, but Larry flies backwards, and a very very thin straw stunt double lands ass-first onto a pitchfork. A fatter, but still kinda thin, stunt double of Larry stands up, pitchfork still in ass, and starts running around like an idiot, alternately screaming and calmly asking for help in removing said pitchfork. Frankly, that's just sloppy sound editing. When Larry first lands on the pitchfork, he kinda sounds like Joe Flaherty to me, but I haven't the time nor the resources to properly draw the connection. This must be the part of the film that's padded out for time... oh, right, the big race. Anyway, there's a big comedy horse race, the horse eats peppers, runs the wrong direction, and Curly and Moe have to act as the proverbial mechanized bunny in a dog race, holding a bucket of water for the horse to drink. Moe and Curly then just HAPPEN to stumble upon a motorcycle with sidecar. Curly gets in, holds the bucket of water on a stick, while Moe drives, and guess what? Is there any doubt that this horse race was over before it started? Well, sometimes you gotta earn your happy ending by writing it yourself. Frankly, W.C. Fields couldn't have done much better. The Stooges each end up with a whole thanksgiving turkey in front of them. Curly at least spills his drink in a comical fashion. The horse also enjoys some nice oats on a silver trough-shaped platter. You know, this all reminds me of a Warner brothers cartoon... I'll never be able to find it the way I'm Googling it, that's for sure. Anyway, it's a boxing match between a giant guy and a wimpy guy. At one point, they start going around the ring, acting like a child's choo choo train. It gets cut abruptly short, and the big boxer says "Why you not like my choo choo?" I may never forget that for as long as I live. But the reason I bring this up is because there's some device that helps the wimpy guy win against the big musclebound boxer. I hesitate to call him a thug, for some reason, but I guess that's what he is. The wimpy guy wins the match, and the trophy goes to... the device that helped the wimpy guy win! Why can't more of these kinds of films end like that?

Good double bill with: The Longshot

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Alix and Luke C. Jackson

I've just realized! The whining noise that my computer makes is starting to get to me. Probably because I'm getting older than I've ever been, and now I'm even older... probably because, unlike other people, my senses are getting sharper with old age, or maybe I've seen one too many superhero movies lately. Or, probably because the whining my computer makes is starting to waver in a sine wave style fashion, as if someone's driving and hitting the brakes constantly. Perhaps it's my hard drive trying to warn me of an impending crash. Anyway, back to the biz @ hand here. I think I'm doing the wrong Jacksons this week, but what the hell. Here's a couple: Alix and Luke C. Nice to see someone in Hollywood who's not thematically ambitious for a change. Clearly Alix is the alpha brother; vis a vis, the clearly longer IMDb résumé. And clearly the 2000s are their favorite decade. It's probably not going to get much better than that.

A perfect end to a perfect trilogy

...or is it? I'm taking a big risk by not including the ellipsis in the banner headline, of course, especially these days. I heard this story about an anti-Sarah Palin comment that had a favorable first paragraph, so the righties ignored it. But I always knew there was something kinda gay about that whole moon landing in '69! Thank God Michael Bay finally shed his camera lens on the topic. I mean, did you SEE those astronauts back then? They got no abs! They're totally uglers... is that a sick new slang word yet? Let me check urbandictionary.com, my go-to resource for... DAMN IT! Sisty Uglers! I'll never stake a claim in this life. On the other hand, thank GOD for urbandictionary.com! "Ugleh" is far worse than "ugly." Somehow I always knew subconsciously that that was the case. I also would've accepted "uggers" but somehow it doesn't sound as good... and as I search for it on urbandictionary.com, I realize now it's a gateway slang word I've heard I should try to steer clear from, so let us leave the world of the teen Valley gurl behind for now.
But seeing as how they're already working on Toy Story 4, the only question is who gets credit for the big Transformers 4 plot. Why not go the Super 8 route? A group of five young kids are trying to make a movie, when suddenly... the big shoot's interrupted by a... a big plane crash! Train's been done to death already. The robots escape. They have to be the good robots, otherwise the kids'd all be dead meat. There's plenty of time for surrogate parenting later. The big escape is on. Flash back to 1066, and we see a Transformer shoot the arrow that won the decisive victory in ye olde Britain. We then see Transformers rowing Viking boats, kidnapping all the pretty women and fleeing to Sweden. We see Transformers vanquish the first Mayflower ship, but ultimately powerless to stop the invading horde of greedy white people. We see a Transformer making the first cave paintings in France. We see a Decepticon cause the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. It's kind of funny, actually. The big takeaway: NEVER leave a Transformer alone with a can of beans! We see Transformers engaging in some sort of a ritual battle at a big national museum... perhaps at night, if you will. We see a Transformer interrupt the joining of the Trans-Continental Railroad... oh, right. We watch in wonder as Transformers co-author the Magna Carta, drop an apple on Isaac Newton's head, and help Martin Luther nail his parchment on that door way back when. We boo and hiss as Decepticons crash our U2 spy plane, put sawdust scrapings into our tins of meat, and rig the 2000 election. We watch further in horror as Decepticons write the script for Transformers 2... that's the only logical explanation, right? We see an Autobot, wounded in battle, stick its arm into a rock, and leave behind a big, glowing, sword-shaped shard, thereby creating the Arthur legend. And, of course, we can't help but laugh when the small, nerdy Autobot with scotch-taped glasses (voiced by Eddie Deezen) gets refused by National Guard recruiters! A little something for everybody.
And then, in a Mt. Doom-ish setting, the iconic, epic, iconic final battle. An army of '57 Chevys on one side (Autobots), and '58 Edsels on the other (Decepticons) drive out as fast as possible to the middle of the battlefield, transform, and start beating the sh... stuffing out of one another! A giant tunneling Transformer emerges from under the ground, shooting fire out of its ass. Robot parts flying everywhere, getting buried in the sides of cliffs, melting the rock from the temperatures hotter than the sun's surface. I've heard it's only 5000 Kelvin or so on the surface, but millions underneath. And finally, by the end of Transformers 4, when the last photogenic reel has been run through the damn projector, the profession of moviemaking itself finally decides to retire. From now on, it's just knitting sweaters for the grandkids and the occasional film preservation job. Pro bono, of course, because filmmaking is very white glove, and washes its hands of the dirty, untidy business of coin. How the people in Ayn Rand novels don't mind being defined by how much money they have, well, it's just beyond me AND the profession of filmmaking. Didn't they watch Fight Club? You are not your bank account! You're just an a-hole!
Something like that. What else? Wow! Two other debuts? Well, you gotta hand it to X-Men: First Class a mere four weeks ago. No other debuts were able to squeeze in when it made the box office its b'eatch. Not Transformers 3! We also got Lawrence Crowne and Monte Carlo to contend with! I hate to cast aspersions... I think that's how you spell aspersions. It's spelled how it looks, right? Anyway, someone sent me a link of George Carlin on The Daily Show twelve years ago. They mentioned that Disney has taken over Times Square, and George pointed out that it was merely a change of hustlers. Well, while Monte Carlo isn't a Disney film per se, they did loan out Selena Gomez to Fox... and for good reason! Oh, right, I missed the cowboy boots. Oh dear, I guess I'm just turning into a dirty old man. Or maybe there's no maybe about it. As for Larry Crowne, well, if Adam Sandler can make a turd like Grown Ups, why not someone else for a change? But Tom has to up the ante a little bit, and buy all his co-stars a new eco-friendly house, with the whole nine yards: solar panels, composting toilet, rainwater encroachment. In yo face, Ed Begley Jr.!