Ernest Hemingway punches Woody in the mouth...

...but ol' Woody's not taking it lying down, I tell you what! Well, for one, he cast daughter Mariel in Manhattan, then, didn't he? Naughty boy. Besides, he's busy planning his 2013 pic as we speak. No time to savour the small victory at the box office that was Midnight in Paris, his 2011 pic with Owen Wilson's nose. But I give credit where credit's due: the rest of Owen Wilson must've studied his Woody Allen pics in advance, as his subliminal Woody impression seemed to have a lot of the nuances down, especially the 'not believing what he's hearing' stuff that Woody seems to do an awful lot. But when you're surrounded by idiots and lesser brains like Woody, you gotta fight back somehow.
I gotta keep this short, but I think I can hit all the main points. Kudos to Michael Sheen who's in a brunette disguise; from Twilight to this, he covers the waterfront, man. The opening sequence of Midnight in Paris is awfully reminiscent of the opening of Manhattan, but in and around Paris, I'm assuming. All the big Paris landmarks are here: the Arc de Triomph, the Dior store, and of course the omnipresent Eiffel Tower, even tackily lit up at night like some kind of giant ... Paris monument. You get the idea. The picture quality of the Blu-Ray we were watching was so good, that the opening credits themselves reminded me of imitation Woody Allen credits that pop up every now and again. What is it with him and that one font? Certain directors have their own fonts: John Landis and Carpenter come to mind... I guess they're the only ones.
As for the film itself, well, as a fellow liberal damned to an eternity in hell, or Arizona, whichever comes first, I always appreciate any dig at the Republicans I can get, and Woody goes after the Tea Partiers, no less! Oh, Kurt Fuller, I hope you don't hang out with Bruce Willis and Fred Thompson too much. Now, there's always a great debate that rages in any Woody Allen film. Here, it's about nostalgia. The main character is ... wait for it... a writer! Woody HAS been reading The Onion lately! Owen Wilson plays a hacky Hollywood screenwriter, perhaps modeled after one of the Wibberleys or Henry Bean/Leora Barish... maybe Tim Herlihy, someone like that: a Hollywood creature who's about to be married and condemned to a life in Malibu with his hot young wife. His current work is about a guy who runs a nostalgia shop. Owen Allen himself longs for Paris in the 1920s. You know, baguettes, rubbing elbows with the icons of tomorrow, all that post-Great War crap. Will his dream magically come true? Or will the anti-nostalgia argument triumph? Well, sadly, this isn't Melinda and Melinda, and we're only going down one road in this pic.
But I ramble on too long, I'm afraid. One of my viewing companions summed it up nicely: "Does this mean that Woody's officially lost his mind?" I'm paraphrasing, of course. But Woody did once say that he couldn't have directed Dr. Strangelove better than Kubrick did, but why not try a spin on The Shining for a change? A portal to the 1920s is discovered, of course, and is used several times by Owen Wilson. Woody also saw and liked Inception, and made a portal inside a portal, with Inception actress Marion Cotillard, no less. There's even a portal punchline, which somehow feels like salt in the wound. I gotta run. Don't give up your day job, Woody.

**1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Galadriel?

All snarkiness aside, director Sam Raimi seems to have finally achieved his goal with The Gift and A Simple Plan... For Love of The Game, not so much. From all the interviews he gave in the early 90s when documentary filmmakers were fawning over indie directors, Sam kept saying something like that he wanted to inspire people... something like that. In other words, reach beyond his Evil Dead movies and all the stuff he did for TV like Hercules and Xena. Mission accomplished. Twice.
I wouldn't dream of spoiling the plot at all, but it does involve a woman who possesses psychic-type gifts; as usual, she hates to label it or profit from it. I guess you end up like James van Praagh ended up once profit enters the picture. As with all good movies like this, we get an opening scenario to establish her routine, and then we get swept up into the episode that will consume the rest of the movie. Raimi can't help but throw in some old-fashioned horror movie scare tactics, of course, but he also has some nice cutting-edge (circa 2000) CGI Vista-glide effects, slightly similar to What Lies Beneath, but probably costing much less. Raimi uses some of the cast here that would go on to his Spider Man trilogy: J.K. Simmons and Rosemary Harris mostly. My viewing companions wondered openly why screenwriter Billy Bob didn't either star in or direct this thing? Well, he was a busy boy at the time, perhaps working on The Man Who Wasn't There or Waking Up In Reno... sheesh.
That's all I can recall at the moment. Fine movie, top notch acting all around, good location shots where the trees get all the water they can stand, and plenty that they can't. Giovanni Ribisi's one scene of course is a visceral favorite... a dramatic ode to Lebowski, perhaps?

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Tyler Perry's The Great White Book

Welp, while I'm sitting here, waiting for a DVD to "format"... in this day and age! The very idea. Now it says there's five seconds left! That's the longest five seconds I've ever seen, and the progress bar's still only at half way. Computers are just dumb that way; they have no conception of time. As usual, I'm forced to multi-task, so why not take this time to write about the latest and greatest last movie I saw recently? In this case, it was the biggest feel-good historical hit of 2011, The Help. As usual, I couldn't decide which image to go with. Do I go with the lightning strike at about 30:18? Or do I go with the fallout of the movie's big secret at about 1:47:21? As usual, I pick both... but I couldn't help but notice that that landscape in which the lightning bolt hit looks a little bit like English countryside with their carefully sculpted lines of trees demarcating properties. GOLDBLATT!!!!! No wonder the movie's budget is so small. They're using bloody stock footage!

Well, where to begin? Well, since the movie's about prejudice, I'll reveal MY personal prejudices. When I see certain names, like, say, the NEW Participant Media... they've frankly become a little too cozy with the Rick Warrens and the Mel Gibsons of the world for my taste. And now with Chris Columbus and his 1492 Pictures production company, and while he's busy thinking about his legacy, the rest of us hardcore cinema buffs are thinking about his crimes against cinema. Home Alone and Bicentennial Man come to mind. I'll let I Love You, Beth Cooper slide; well, he was rebounding from Rent, so why not pine for the lost 80s of your 30-somethings? Not to mention the film's director. A director's got to have a rough name, in my meek, humble opinion. Quentin Tarantino. Francis Ford Coppola. Joel and Ethan Coen. Alfonso Cuaron. Guillermo del Toro. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Pedro Almodovar. Andrew Niccol. Krzysztof Kieslowski.... Tate Taylor? TATE TAYLOR? No, no... this is a Disney sit-com star's name. A pop star under 20 years old's name. The name of someone starring in the Twilight movies. Not the name of an Oscar-nominated director. But I guess his previous work, Pretty Ugly People, is as close as we're going to get to a gritty Marc Rocco-esque '90s pic.

HOWEVER... THAT BEING SAID... I did appreciate many facets of the picture. The lush cinematography, provided by Lethal Weapon 2 and Batman & Robin cameraman Stephen Goldblatt. Old school camerawork: real film, good dolly and crane movements of the camera, and a relatively still camera when it comes to emotional moments... apparently, the trick of having a shaky camera during scenes of emotional turmoil is FINALLY falling out of favour. And the production design: the ratty interiors of the rooms that the black men and women live in look like the real deal. And the acting: very good acting, and I'm assuming the Southern tics in the actors' speech were spot on. Either spot on or too textbook. Sounded pretty good to me. I'm sure they got the best 1st A.D.s in the biz to work on this pic and keep things moving on time. The story's simple enough to understand, but the thing it gets right is the little details of everyday life in the South in the early '60s..... Really? You're scared of black people's germs? They serve your food, they clean your house, they nurse your children all day... but they can't use the white bathrooms in the house. That makes a lot of sense. Sorry, there I go into standup comedian mode again. So, the film works on about 9 of 10 of its facets up to a point.

But then... the spell the film casts is slowly lost, piece by piece. I started to wonder: is Bryce Dallas Howard playing two parts by any chance? Hilly AND the ditzy Celia? Apparently not, but I suppose both girls are just as busty. Bryce didn't show off as much. I guess this Jessica Chastain's taking off; I just saw her in The Debt! Very different vibe in that one. And Emma Stone is fine as the young white female lead of the pic, although I did keep thinking of Lindsay Lohan for some reason. Of course, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer kinda steal the show, Octavia a little more so. On the other hand... Serenity Johnson from Halfway Home? No, there's something wrong with that. She's not allowed to be this good in this movie after being in that show. And she does a fine job selling the concept of comfort food, but I learned that lesson a few years ago for myself, thank you very much. I'm paying the price for it now by going to the gym as often as I can. And to nitpick the sound editing, doorbells probably didn't make the stock doorbell sound back in the 60s that they do now, but what do I know, right?

And then, as all these strands start to unravel the film completely, there's the matter of the book that's being written. The girl's given deadlines that don't seem to be reachable with '60s typewriter technology. And while the toilets on Hilly's front lawn was a nice visual gag, would that kind of thing really happen? Really? And wouldn't there be a harsher punishment for "Skeeter" for that typo? Dontcha think? And of course, the little girl using one of the lawn commodes, well... I thought Dave did it better in Jackass 1, don't you folks? Kinda turned The Help into an Adam Sandler pic for me... Say! Wasn't he named Skeeter in one of his films? A lot of people going potty in The Help, come to think of it. Dramatic at first, comedic later on in the 2nd and 3rd acts.

And now, we come to the film's big reveal... I wouldn't dare spill the beans on the film's big "awful horrible" big secret... is that what she called it? Let me check the IMDb... nope, nothing there. Anyway, in dancing around what the big secret of the movie is, it reminds me of a similar culinary secret in Fried Green Tomatoes, and I can't help but think that this kind of thing happened to all you Southern honkies probably more often than you think. All of you probably weren't saints! Unfortunately, the secret doesn't stay secret too long, and pretty soon it ends up in the young white girl's book, and it becomes the highlight for the dozens of readers we see reading the book. This is sadly where I had to part company with the film. Even the most progressive New York publishing house of the 60s probably wouldn't print such a thing in a book. You'd have to wait for Philip Roth's work in the 70s, am I right? Something like that? Don't you think it would be a bit more memorable as a publishing event? This is the reason why Indiana Jones only set Hitler temporarily back and didn't kill Hitler himself in the Indy films: historical consistency! The Wild Wild West effect is more pervasive than I thought: our explosion-happy, attention-span-shortened present is creeping into our depictions of the past.
So, to summarize. I'll rate it this way: the First Act of the film gets four stars, the Second Act three and the Third Act one and a half. What's that average out to? I'll say two and a half. A three star movie is a slick Hollywood vehicle I'll probably only see once, like The Client or The Talented Mr. Ripley. A three star movie is slick and unmemorable, but at least it's logically consistent. The Help plays too much hooky with history at the end. In closing, let me just ruminate on what Aibileen would tell the special chilluns in her life: "You is kind. You is smart. You is important." I can't help but think of another Movie Philosophy Guru who used to say "I feel good. I feel great. I feel wonderful." Oh, you know who I'm talking about! But in case you don't, here's the hyperlink anyway. You let me down, Onion and Village Voice, so I gotta do your dirty work for you. Good luck at the Oscars, The Help! You probably won't need it since you were #1 for three weeks, I'm thinking.

**1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Stooged in a Hole, or The Fashion of the Christ

Well, it was either that, or go with "Cookoo NOT on a Choo-Choo." Personally, I think I made the right choice. I'm not as proud of myself as The Donald Trump is proud of himself, but ultimately I think the Stooges owe a little bit of a debt to Laurel and Hardy in general, and in particular to the premise of their mean-spirited romp Towed in a Hole. Yes, it's time for our next entry in the March of the Stooges, Cookoo Cavaliers. It's not one I see on an at-all regular basis... although I do think I watched it a while ago. I think we TiVo'd it off of IFC or AMC or TCM... one of those channels. So let's get started in earnest.

ACT ONE

Always good to open with a great comedy sign on the side of a truck. We see the boys trying to peddle some fish. Larry's driving, and Moe and Curly are on top, sitting in a boat tied to the truck. Moe and Curly are yelling through horns, and Moe's blowing through his... hmm! Sounds vaguely like how they play the shofar! Moe tells Larry to stop the truck. Fortunately for them, Moe and Curly don't fall off the truck. Let me get that right: Moe tells Larry to "stop the boat." We'll leave that for now. And then, we get to the more blatant Towed in a Hole reference. The Stooges end with the premise where L 'n H began with it. As some of you may remember, Laurel proposes the idea at the beginning of the film of cutting out the middleman and fishing for their own fish. The Stooges have been at it for at least a month... oh, right. SPOILER ALERT. Literally! Anyway, all three have their feet on the ground and get ready to pound the pavement some more trying to sell fish. Larry proves himself incompetent with customers as he grabs a basket of fish, sees a pretty classy lady approaching, and GETS SCARED! He gets scared, drops the basket, and retreats to Moe's side. A sad day for Larry fans everywhere. (Larry 1:20)
The blowing of the first sale begins. Curly steals the "haddock" joke from Horse Feathers, a Marx brothers feature film. The lady is unimpressed, and even fires off a joke of her own! Moe tells her that the fish in the picnic basket is a "weak" fish. She smells it from a distance and says "Smells strong to me!" She makes this comedy racket look too easy... you know, I kinda thought that looked like One-Take Anita Garvin. The Stooges are now stealing Laurel and Hardy's cast, for God's sake!!
A dog then smells the fish and rolls over on the ground, then gets up and runs away. Director Jules White's specialty: directing Stooges and dogs. Undeterred, the boys get back to blowing their horns. Can you even doubt that Larry and Curly will end up blowing their horns into Moe's ears? Why not? Not enough kitchen sink gags to go around.
A customer up high asks what kind of fish the boys have. Moe, just like he did in that one with the kidnapped baby... one of them, rattles off a long list of fish instead of food you shouldn't feed a toddler. The lady asks for a mackerel. The boys run to the back of the truck, open it, and smoke emerges from the back of the truck. Apparently, the fish smell so bad, it's visible in the air. Curly pulls open a drawer on the back of the truck, takes out a gas mask, reaches in to the back of the truck, and gets a fish. Curly then throws the fish at the lady, and the fish rightly hits the lady right in the face. The fish falls into her flower pots on her ledge and the flowers quickly wilt. The woman comes to and throws the fish back down, hitting Moe in the kisser. At this point, Moe says "We've been trying to sell these fish for 30 days... and haven't got rid of one!" Now, in a nice twist... okay, just nice to me... they quickly decide to change their business plan. Larry's off-the-cuff remark is how they decide this time. A rare occurrence indeed.
It's not quite Act Two time yet, folks. First, the boys go to the local real estate business shop, where Jerry from two films ago comes out and sells the boys some real estate. They want to open a saloon, and this dude says "Oh, I have the best beauty saloon in all Mexico!" Lynton Brent, a painfully white white guy, is talking in a bad Mexican accent and appears to be more tan than Snooki is orange. Well, it is indeed all related, and most of the cast of Jersey Shore is in that new Stooges feature length movie, so why not? It's one of those acting jobs that actual Mexican actors would rightly not take. To cut to the chase, Jerry the Mexican entrepreneur, tells the Stooges "You give me $300, and I'll give you the business!" Let the stereotyping begin!

ACT TWO

Scene: Cucaracha, the "busiest spot on the map." Well, the Stooges visit a lot of fictional places... better check Wikipedia just in case. Ooh! How about Google Earth?... (later) nope. Nothing on Wikipedia, and Cucaracha took me to a Mexican restaurant in Minnesota! Made-up place called "Cockroach." Go figure. We see a "Mexican" taking a siesta on a spot near the sidewalk, and the Stooges blaze into town in their truck at 12 fps. The dude doesn't wake up. See, according to the stereotype of the time, Mexicans are apparently lazy. And yet, they work hard for very little money and even less legitimacy. Go figure. Daffy Duck was also guilty of this with his racially-tinged cartoon Mexican Joyride. Well, it was a different time. Still, not as bad as that one Stooge flick with the earthquakes, right? ..now who's lazy? I don't feel like looking it up. I must continue to march ahead.
The boys pull up to their business, which looks in a little bit better shape than the house on the defunct orange ranch of It's a Gift. Curly, getting ahead of himself as usual, introduces us to the first, or second or third, sequence that will help to pad this film out to two reels, or about 16 minutes. He does a pantomime sequence where he pretends to be a bartender, with the aid of some strategically placed sound effects: clinking glasses, falling ice cubes, that kind of crap. They eventually make their way to the locked door of the business. No key. Moe tells Curly to use his head. It works on the first knock!
It's around this time that the boys eventually realize it's a SALON and not a SALOON. You'd think the sign on the front of the biz that says "Beauty Salon" would've tipped them off, but apparently they're all illiterate. Lousy FDR and his corrupt Department of Education! Usually Professor Moe takes over at a time like this, but in a rare bid for alpha male supremacy, Professor Larry says that there's a lot of money to be had in making dames pretty. Curly offers his own advice with a hair bleaching formula that includes gasoline. We'll try it in another film, I'm hoping. Moe gets blocked from poking Curly in the eyes with the ol' hand block, but he's always able to get around it later on. Time to clean up the joint, an act that you'd think would be boring, but not with the Stooges! Moe gets a face full of powder, and Larry laughs at his misfortune. That's twice now in this film he's done that! He's getting a little cocky, dontcha think? Moe and Larry eventually both gang up on Curly. Larry gives Curly a couple good socks on the back of the head that, frankly, I don't think he deserved. Larry's getting VERY cocky and disrespectful in this one! That faceful of perfume wasn't enough justice.

I'm going to attempt two pics here. See what I mean about illiterate?... never mind. I guess it's at the top. Yes, you've seen it here first, folks. I'm doing more than one pic from now on! Anyway, perhaps this is the proper start of Act Two. We'll call it two and a half. The boys are busy painting misspelled words on their newfangled store front, when their first customer arrives: a slick Mexican cowboy and his four girls... burlesque? Brothel? Bordello? Something beginning with 'b' comes to mind, but never mind. This is a clean family pic, all you filth-ites out there. Okay, they're chorus girls. Close enough. The dude wants his four brunette chorus girls to become blonds. Is it safe to say that you don't usually see naturally blond Mexicans? There was a dude I knew in high school who started out life with gorgeous blond hair, only to see it turn brunette in his tweens or teens. Poor fella. Then there was the black dude in college who started out as a redhead but became a brunette when he grew up. Me myself, I'm getting all this awful grey in my hair lately. Too much sugar. I don't wanna grow up! Waaaah. Anyway, enough of the follicle eugenics. Back to the damn Stooges.
The girls are introduced, and Curly gets to do some flirting. He seems to be the best one at that. All the girls are cute enough, which is the problem. I guess the fourth one, Rosita, is supposed to be the ugly one, but did you see her wave? She's got 'tude, dude! She's not wearing glasses, so she's not ugly, as these films go. Damn! Larry really is a naughty boy in this one: he's hitting on TWO of the dames at once! (Larry 8:52) I guess the moral of this Stooge fable is: never leave your girl or girls at a Stooges' beauty parlor. And yet, in they go. The blind leading the blind. Curly takes a chance at some more flirting, and he goes in for a kiss. Why does Moe always try to intercept these kisses, either directly or indirectly? Explicitly or implicitly? Doesn't he know he's going to scream that he's been poisoned and slap Curly? Moe kicks Larry in the ass and wastes a perfectly good punchline opportunity. Larry said to the chick whose looks they're about to destroy first, "Did anyone ever tell you you have beautiful black eyes?" Kick from Moe, and all Moe says is "Get back there and get to work." Sheesh! Why not something like "Your ass is going to be black and blue in a minute!" Oh, right... family friendly again. Just family friendly stuff like eye pokes and throwing fish at ladies.
The first lady sits down, gets a cloth thrown over her like at the barber, and she says "I'm going to take a nap." Uh huh. Well, the Stooges had good screenwriters working for them, one can't help but admit.
The fun begins. Curly cracks two eggs over the lady's hair and uses an egg beater on the top of her head. The lady has to sit there with egg yolk over her left eye. Whatever they were paying her, it clearly wasn't enough. Curly runs afoul of a clothespin that won't stay put. I can safely assume he's using a clothespin on her hair, can't I? This is a Stooge beauty salon, now. Gotta keep that squarely in mind. Meanwhile, Larry goes out to look for some mud. Finding some in a wet hole in a sidewalk, he cheerfully fills up his bucket and heads back in. The three of them proceed to cover the woman's face with the mud, as we hear her muffled ... shrieking? I hate to overemphasize it, but that's just the chauvinist in me. The mud looks more like chocolate frosting at this point. Moe goes to work on the girl's fingernails with a big-ass pair of scissors. What a nightmare... and I'm not even a girl over here!
One cross-fade later, and Moe's indeed spraying the girl's hand with a paint sprayer as discussed earlier in the film. The girl now has a thing over her face that looks sort of like an onion, or maybe a small sink with some of the pipe sticking up. It has to be seen to be believed. Why don't we call this Act Three?

ACT THREE

The torture continues, but at least the Stooges are messing themselves up too. Curly ends up with a veritable paint beard from Moe's sprayer. They still haven't gotten the big thing of concrete off her face yet. I'm assuming it's concrete; good comedy facial material, for one. Curly begins pulling big tufts of hair off the woman's head. You think one would do the trick, but the woman stays in the chair all the same. Larry starts delicately hitting the woman's concrete-covered face with a hammer and chisel. He hits himself with the hammer, then he hits Curly AND himself in rapid succession. Moe joins in on the fun after he gets hit in the face with a dislodged chunk of the concrete. At no point do the other three women beat the sh... stop the Stooges from whatever the hell they think they're doing. Moe takes up the hammer and chisel and proceeds to hit Larry and Curly. Moe, in an unusual moment, asks Larry for the thing the workman left behind... and Larry gets a big-ass drill! Moe goes to work. Is the woman dead yet? If she's not after 4:51, she'll never be. Well, it was obviously a dummy, but still... Jesus! The woman, groggy, gets up with some concrete dust left on her face, and a nice Larry-sized bald spot on the back of her head. She walks out of the salon and Moe tells Larry and Curly to get the other girls. All too convenient. Time to ruin three girls at once.
Moe, after a failed "See that?", throws a glass bottle of hair remover at Curly. It hits the wall in a magnificent explosion, and then... time for another proxy. A dog gets soaked in some of the hair remover... gee, I wonder what's going to happen? Will Curly put A and B together, just like with the alum? Will we? The boys end up spritzing each other with the toxic hair goo they've made. Moe and Larry get big facefuls of it, but their eyes don't burn out so it must be okay. Larry makes his girl look like Ed Grimley at 6:33. Things go from bad to worse when Moe calls for hot towels. Oh, great. They'd probably use them, too! They're just Mexican girls, who's going to care?
And then... FINALLY! The dude comes back with the first girl, and even though they appear to have dubbed his lines in later, he's in a mind to shoot the boys so full of holes that they'll look like some kind of bloody Sierpinski Sponge... I mean, Swiss cheese. (Menger sponge? I like Sierpinski better.) Unfortunately, he waits to see what his other three girls look like. Normally, I'd hate to spoil the surprise, but I'm so down on this particular short that I'll tell you what happens: two of the girls look like Larry, and the one on the right looks like Curly! Their fashion crucifixion wasn't as long and drawn out as the first woman, to be sure. The boys make their escape, but end up running down the street being shot at by the girls. A fitting ending to an unfortunately awful Stooge short. It's fine when the Stooges are hurting each other, but in this case they've crossed the wrong line. I'm going to do like the Maltin book and give this a one-star rating, or a BOMB.

BOMB

-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans

Wasn't Stand By Me great? Wasn't it? I guess it was about as good as it got for these two. No, you want to be more like Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, I'm afraid.

Spielberg vs. Spielberg

Boo, IMDb. Yay beer! Well, the official IMDb top 10 is still on last week, so I have to go to my backup plan, Variety.com, which says that Tom Cruise's movie tops the box office this week. The rebound story of the year! Just last week it was at a mere #3 or something or other. So, they started running the pictures of Tom Cruise wearing a hoodie... and he's 18 again! Lucky bastid. Dragon Tattoo came in third, something else second... Sherlock Holmes 2, that's it. So the top three is all sequels... if you consider that Dragon Tattoo is based on a trilogy. Close enough. But for me and people like me, the real story is Spielberg's two films going head to head. Why, I haven't seen anything like it since John McTiernan went up against himself in 1999. That's right, THE John McTiernan! Die Hard? Predator 1? The list goes on and on... actually, those are the only two anyone remembers. But it appears that Spielberg couldn't crack the top 3. For shame. He hasn't had as rough a time of it since The Terminal came out in '04, but at least he's never had as rough a go of it as with Pluto Nash. Sheesh! I gotta run. Pic later.

In case I forget again...

Sheesh. Good thing I ran across Abel Ferrara's name. Of course, as a globe connected to the internet, we all labour under a certain amount of short attention span and short term memory. Because I don't get to these reviews as quickly as I should, I put them off. But a friend of mine did TiVo Abel Ferrara's 1995 vampire pic The Addiction. How bad could it be? For me, rather bad. I know Ferrara's one of those directors that film critics kinda have to like. I'm no longer living by myself in a mancave of an apartment, so I missed my chance to see Bad Lieutenant 1 with Harvey Keitel. That's the one he'll be remembered for, of course. For me, probably Driller Killer; gotta love that title. I'm not even gonna post a pic of The Addiction. Phooey.
But I will give it some storyline props. It was ahead of Twilight by 13 years. Here's the story. SPOILER ALERT. A young, naive Lili Taylor gets bitten by vampire chick Annabella Sciorra, and you know what happens? She becomes COOL, that's what happens! She rocks the academic world, that's what happens! She wears sunglasses at night, talks like Kerouac on speed, and is COOL COOL COOL. That's basically what happens. Lili converts her close friends, Lili runs afoul of a vampire alpha male, stages a vampire coup of sorts of the literati at her Ph.D. ceremony, and generally climbs the vampire and scholar social ladder, spouting pseudo-Ayn Rand philosophy along the way. Or maybe I'm not giving it the credit it deserves. Maybe if Ed Wood wrote slightly hipper scripts, like Diablo Cody does. But, don't worry, folks. Good triumphs in the end, if you consider the Catholic Church good. Close enough for this movie. Christopher Walken has a short scene as the alpha male that Lili runs afoul of. Walken was a busy boy in 1995, what with The Prophecy and all, but he owed Ferrara a favor, I guess. Ferrara owes all of us, I think. Especially for Dangerous Game. Hmm! Is screenwriter Nicholas St. John some sort of pseudonym for Ferrara himself? He seems to get work ONLY WITH Ferrara... kinda like John Brownjohn only seems to work with Roman Polanski. Another mystery for the ages.
One last thought. Most modern movies are in black and white in order to make a bold statement about cinema, or for the unique visual opportunities it offers. I think Ferrara chose black and white because it's cheaper, and because you can use Hershey's chocolate sauce for blood.

**
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

The tools we use every 10 years

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

ACT ONE

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

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

ACT TWO

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

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

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

ACT THREE

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

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

Auteur Watch - Michael and Shawn Rasmussen

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

Cheeky Basterd

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

Triple Indumbnity

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

ACT ONE

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

ACT TWO

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

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

ACT THREE

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

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

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Stephen and Timothy Quay

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

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

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

Stoogy's Day Out

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

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

ACT ONE

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

ACT TWO

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

ACT THREE

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

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Liam Neeson's "Frantic"

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

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Mark and Michael Polish

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

No debuts this week!

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

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

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

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

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Short Reviews - November 2011

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



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

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

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

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

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

Vanilla Sky - Decameron Crowe!

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

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

The Notebook - The role that got away from Jessica Biel

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

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

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

The Chocolate War - Oh, Obie...

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

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

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

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

Cold Souls - Good double bill with American Splendor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs. Doubtfire - No doubt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kazaam - Ahhh... that's better.

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

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

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


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



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

Auteur Watch - Jesse and Evgenia Peretz

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