Auteur Watch - Charlton and Fraser C. Heston

"It is NOT a world of men, 'Machine'!" The usual suspects? The closing of the American frontier, computers, and... let's say refrigerators. Why, without refrigerators, men would have to go out with bowie knives and chase down a buffalo to get their meat fix! But thanks to American Exceptionalism, all we have to do is drive to the store and buy it... even though a real man would probably steal his steak. As for me, I've got guys driving up in vans trying to shove meat down my throat. I don't even need to drive to the store! On the other hand, they only show up every two months or so. So persistent are they. And they never have Tofurky Italian sausage that I used to eat way too much of.
Where was I? Oh, right, the Hestons. Well, after profiling the Scheinmans last week, I just KNEW my list of auteur siblings/parents was incomplete. Charlton probably directed something... there you go. Mother Lode. Long before the Coen brothers change the directing dynamic forever, the Hestons did it first. Now every two bit internet millionaire with a brother thinks he can get behind the Canon HD video camera and play God with cast and crew's lives. Then it was the 90s, and young Fraser had to go to Scheinman and beg for work. Well, how about a Stephen King adaptation? Those are still hot, right? Tell you what. We've got Frank Darabont doing the classy Stephen King stuff, so why don't you do one of his dreck books? Here's 20 million dollars and the full resources of Castle Rock at your disposal; go make us a damn hit movie! He didn't completely a-hole his way out of the biz on that one, but Alaska finished off both Hestons for good, at least in terms of the silver screen. Of course, Charlton himself did appear in that Michael Moore documentary! And that cameo in the 2001 Planet of the Apes reboot. But like Michael Schroeder before him, relatively young Fraser decided to take a break anyway. Well, he was overdue, and frankly he just doesn't fit in with all these young punks running Hollywood nowadays. Off to the ranch in Montana. Unfortunately, Schroeder beat him to the punch, coming out of the retirement coma first with Man in the Chair, but ol' Fraser's got an ace up his sleeve! Something called The Search for Michael Rockefeller is currently in production, and I see that Fraze is proving himself a double threat on this one: director AND narrator! Well, the Rockefeller name is almost as iconic as the Heston name, but I guess it'll have to do. A toast to Fraser C. Heston! You've done your dad proud.

Liam & the Wolves

As expected, The Grey takes the top slice of cake this week at the box office. It scarfed up $20 million at the ticket counter, but it cost $25 mill in TV ads to get that 20 mill! I have it on the highest authority that it's director Joe Carnahan's masterpiece, but I don't know... his The A Team was pretty masterpiece-y, too! Debuting at #3 this week is Two For the Money... I mean, One for the Money, the latest Katherine Heigl juggernaut. Apparently, leaving Grey's Anatomy was the best thing to happen to her. It at least got her away from the unseemly advances of now grown-up Patrick Dempsey. She's such a big star now that she won't return Soderbergh's calls! Go figure. The last debut this week is... no, not Phone Booth... no, not this thing... it's the latest Sam Worthington juggernaut, called Man on a Ledge. Almost sounds like the title of a Magritte painting! He's got Mel Gibson's long Lethal Weapon hair, and he's got attitude, but hopefully Sam won't start spouting right wing gibberish any time soon. Gotta be a billionaire for that.

Money never sleeps, but 'Wall Street' slips into coma

A lot has happened over the course of 23 years since the original, and it starts out promising enough, blatant ode to the Blues Brothers aside; I guess Frank Oz was unavailable to reprise his role. It's a good thing I saw the original first; otherwise, I might not have appreciated what ... sorry, SPOILER ALERT... what Charlie Sheen says to Gordon Gekko at the big function they both attend. Unfortunately, Charlie seems to be less reprising his role as Bud Fox as he is appearing as Charlie Sheen, the hotshot actor with a babe under each arm. Oliver Stone gives himself a juicier cameo than last go-round.
Then of course, we get to Shia LaBeouf. I guess this might explain his motorcycle accident he had. We'll try to leave that alone for now. I'm probably not giving away a whole lot by revealing that Shia's just a guy who happens to be sleeping with Gekko's daughter. Good plot construct. It also worked in The Paper Chase, but it seemed a little more genuine. Shia is a Wall Street hustler trying to raise capital for a nuclear fusion plant. For God's sake, the guy's name is Masters! What more do you bastards want? Since Shia plays a Wall Street guy who's trying to be a green energy crusader AND make a little money, let me just take a second here to defend solar power. Actually, I don't really need to, as the deal that transpires in the movie is more reflective of a big oil man's interest in solar, pun intended. I've been through worse on my thesis: "Sun sets on solar power", "Solar industry in eclipse," etc. Literally tens of them! So even though Solyndra may represent the industry as a whole for lots of Americans, I've studied the industry enough to know their big breakthrough is at hand: Nanosolar, hot carrier cells, salt-thermal storage, don't get me started.
Gekko this time around is a little bit shorter on aphorisms, but I did like the exchange he had with Shia about money in the subway. Marrying money, sleeping with money... ah, to be rich and paranoid. Otherwise, the movie seems to be less of an oracle and more of a reveler in the trappings; some might call it "possesso-porn," but I won't go that far.
Now, there's an episode that happens that threatens to tear Shia and Gekko's daughter apart forever and ever, but by that point I lost interest and started thinking about how I would have written the scene. For some reason, I wanted Shia to say "Okay, fine. You know what? The whole Gekko family is NUTS!" and storm off. But as always, that says more about me than anything, as I haven't been a father yet. As we all know, men don't leave. Of course, not even a man as hardened as Gordon Gekko is immune to the prospect of being a grandfather. His heart is softened, and he offers to stake the kid with a very large sum of money. If only Mary Matalin or Grover Norquist were on hand to scream "Redistributionist!"
Frank Langella does what he can in a role meant for Jackie Mason. I was also reminded of his turn as the editor of The Daily Planet in Superman 5. But once again, the names of the phony firms here are a tad clunky. Churchill? Please. Rodrigo Prieto ASC does what he can to hide the digital video, but it's not enough, damn it. Like Angry Smurf, I HATE the blurry pictures! In the music department, Stewart Copeland is out, and David Byrne and Brian Eno are in! They do what they can.
So, to summarize, maybe I'm just a jaded sophisticate, but the sequel doesn't seem as good or as predictive as the original. Maybe, given some time, it'll be up there with Inside Job or even Too Big to Fail, but it can at least boast a theatrical release. The screenwriters seem to have done some of their homework, but not enough. At least Gekko seems to have paid more dues than Jack Abramoff... or, at least, saved a hell of a lot for that rainy day.

**1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

VH1 - Behind the Broadcast

That's about as snarky I can get, but what can I say? Movies like The King's Speech bring out the latent Brit in me, as I'm sure it does for the Weinsteins. Everyone's good in it, of course. Tim Burton loaned out Helena Bonham Carter for a few weeks, Colin Firth's speech impediment was convincing, and well... who doesn't love Geoffrey Rush? Seeing as how I just saw Karate Kid for film buffs, Rush makes a fine Miyagi to Firth's Daniel-san. He lost the Oscar to Christian Bale, but came a close second, I'm sure. Director Tom Hooper, hot off the John Adams HBO series, brings similar sensibilities to this tale. There's a bit of a student film feel to the stationary shots, but I guess it's to accentuate the regality of it all. Guy Pearce was just in a film with Adam Sandler, so I couldn't help but think of that when he taunts his brother Colin, and the whole speech impediment thing. I dare say they're trying to get me to feel the Royals' pain!

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch: Cameron Kincaid

Well, ultimately, I think The Village Voice nailed Man in the Chair about as well as anybody, but to be fair, the film did get better when it focused more on the old people involved. I thought I knew a thing or two about Hollywood, but I didn't attend high school in Hollywood. That's sort of the perspective we get here in the place holder of our hero, baby-fat-ridden high school student Cameron Kincaid, a director's name if ever there was one. James Cameron, Cameron Crowe, Cameron Kincaid - the big three, if you will. Also, I hate to say it, but hanging around film geeks must be pretty painful for the average person. I'm a film geek and even I grew tired of Cameron and his best friend. Or maybe I'm just not hip to the film geek youth anymore.
The film establishes early that our hero is a troubled youth. Cameron is on his bicycle, and he gets taunted by a gang of white punks in their late 20s in a nice car. Cameron starts to flee, but then doubles back, riding over the car with his bike. Why? Because it's awesome! Duh! Next scene: Cameron's in class, and the punks in the car are in the back of the classroom. Some might say that if you're in the same class with the bully, you're probably not going to do that to his car, but what do I know? The chief bully's also an aspiring director named Brett Ratner... I mean, Brett Raven. The inevitable pounding in the hallway is pretty tame, but Brett knows how to hurt Cameron: by telling him he has no chance of winning that film festival contest. I want to grab the first third of this film by the neck, shake it and say "GET A LIFE." There's more to life than the making of a film. The rest of the film eases up on it a little, and there's a nice twist to the ending. For some reason I hate to spoil it, I guess because I want you to suffer as I have suffered.
There's a good friend of mine who just hates it when the title of the movie is used in the movie's dialogue. Barton Fink is the exception to the rule, of course... not Charlie Bartlett. Plucky old geezer Christopher Plummer tells the kid, "Ah! You want to be the man in the chair," meaning the director of a film. The man in the chair of Man in the Chair is Michael Schroeder. He was the first assistant director on a movie called Jocks, a film they showed on USA Up All Night hosted by Gilbert Gottfried. I remember this because Gilbert played a mime, with narration provided by some wicked French dude. The other film was Off the Mark... I assume the link is correct. I don't think Schroeder was involved with that one, but it seems like the kind of thing he might have. He was also an A.D. on Million Dollar Mystery, which apparently has been permanently banned from ever being shown on TV, and rightly so, frankly.
The late 80s-early 90s were a step up for Michael Schroeder, as he himself finally became the man in the chair, if only on such video store shelf mainstays as Cyborg 2 and Cyborg 3: The Recycler. It took him ten years to get Man in the Chair made... why do I get the feeling that the Robert Wagner character in the movie is an isomorph of Angelina Jolie?
Kudos to M. Emmet Walsh on a gritty performance, but when he quotes Hunter Thompson near the end, it's more of what we expect from him. Somebody give him a role in a Funny or Die video as Newt Gingrich. He's the only guy who can do it! And of course, one last tribute to the script. At one point, Mulder's boss on The X Files takes sympathy on the Plummer character by saying "My ass bleeds for you." As does mine for this film.

**
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Stooge Fright

Well, after the summit of Dutiful but Dumb, it's only natural to expect the next Stooge film to be at least not as good, and at most a downright letdown. All the World's a Stooge is a lot closer to the latter category, but I might just be having a bad day. Reminds me of a bad Francis Veber comedy, if he ever were to get his busy French hands on the Stooges. To be fair, there's no casual wine drinking in this one, combined with the eating of decadent French pastry... mmmmm. French pastry.

ACT ONE

A swipe from the past at the Angelina Jolies of the world? Ouch! Well, the Mia Farrows, too. We start at the top of the American social structure, free from the wild influence of the likes of the Stooges... or so they thought! We meet a fast-talking society dame holding a cat who's about to receive a refugee from "the war torn battlefields of... somewhere." The butler prepares to alert the media. However, all is not well on the homefront: the husband, a rather working-class looking lad, or at least a lower-rung managerial type, comes barging in with a bad toothache... Did anyone notice that there's a dog sitting at the table? Must be a leftover from one of those all-dog pictures that got made back then for some reason. I think I know the reason: they were CUTE, damn it. And some people probably thought, oh my! Hollywood's got the technology to read dog's thoughts, translate them to sound waves and transfer these waves directly to celluloid? Jules Verne be damned! Mostly Southern types. The actor playing the husband is apparently a fellow named Emory Parnell. What Preston Sturges saw in him I'll never know. But the Stooges usually get saddled with rather crappy supporting players. Showbiz, baby! Emory does get to some Stooge shtick, as he ladles a bunch of alfredo sauce onto what I'm assuming is an omelette. In the next scene, it becomes a water-soaked sponge. He puts his fork in it, and water spurts all over his nice brown suit. The missus insists he goes get that bum tooth pulled, so he'll be in a good mood when the refugee arrives. Good screenwriting, baby! Before leaving, he runs afoul of a hot pancake. More Stooge shtick. Anybody can do this.
New scene: dentist office. As usual, the old, musty, rusty, moldy comedy formula of a person's name: their first initial is I (Isadore for boys, Iris for girls), and the person's last name is a verb related as roughly as possible to their profession, with "um" on the end. Jewish? In this case, the dentist's name is "I. Yankum." Precious. Probably how Isaac Asimov got his "I, Robot" title. We hear Curly grunting, as though his tooth's getting pulled. As with the beginning of Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World, the scene's not quite what we think. I dare not spoil it any further. Needles to say, Moe's in a bad mood and he gives Larry a swift kick in the ass for good measure. They play window washers, yet manage to get the dentist soaking wet instead. Exit the doctor. I should also mention that Moe tells Curly to stop falling off the scaffold. We'll leave that aside for now. So, the dentist is gone, and the Stooges are cleaning up the water they "spilled." Enter Ajax Bullion, holding his hand to his face from the pain of his tooth... We'll leave that alone for now as well, but I suppose we can safely assume that the Stooges probably did something to the secretary, and that she's now incapacitated to some capacity. Nevertheless, the guy's tooth is a humdinger, and so necessity becomes the mother of comic havoc, hopefully just this once. Since the guy insisted, whatever the Stooges do to him is nice and legal. And so, they begin to pull the bad tooth, the only way they know how... Now, here's a great screenwriting tip: watch how they do this scene. Curly finds a giant pair of oversize novelty dentures, and starts pretending they're canastas. Moe takes it and throws it onto the chair... need I tell you the second half? I think so, because it's probably the lamest example of Moe pretending he's got something stuck on/in his ass, and then yanking it out, but apparently the director didn't want to cut away that day. They do cut away when Moe sticks it on Curly's nose. Good exchange between Moe and Curly at 4:37.

ACT TWO

Well, we're past the 5:20 mark, and we're still in the dentist office, and we're getting past the point of ridiculousness, which for the Stooges is saying a lot. Ajax now has a mouth full of dentist cement, and they've probably pulled the wrong tooth. Larry tells Curly, "You stripped his gears!" Did the guy have dentures? I still don't get that one. Anyway, cement in the mouth, but it's dried too fast! They can't put his teeth back! They try drilling with a power drill. Curly gets an idea: "We'll have to blast." They go with Curly's idea. Long story short, the Stooges' brief flirtation with dentistry ends, they dive out the window onto the scaffold, and down the side of the building they go. Meanwhile, there's an explosion, and Mr. Bullion is totally okay. Now, I'm probably getting ahead of myself, but there was one time the Stooges took an engine out of a car, but the guy was able to get in and drive off. However, he drove only a short ways, leaving engine parts trailing behind him. As for Mr. Bullion's brush with Stooge dentistry, he manages to keep going. All a little too neat, but the biggest hole in the plot is yet to come, my friends.
Scene: outside Jerome's Inc. Department Store... an investment of Curly's, perhaps? The boys drop a bucket on Officer Bud Jamison's head, then their scaffolding lands on his back. They take off running, hiding in some guy's car. The guy shows up: Ajax Bullion. Small worlds make for big laughs, apparently. As fate would have it, Moe must've read his thesaurus that day and he declares that the three of them are... yup! You guessed it. Refugees. Ajax, proving himself to be the fourth Stooge, indeed, offers to take the Stooges to his house. That'll show the missus!... I guess.
And so, halfway into Act Two, we have the big test of our suspension of disbelief. The Stooges are dressed up as children, Larry in a giant girl's dress. Moe and Curly have some nice choreography at 8:16. Take that, Fosse! Larry gets slapped for saying "Leave him alone!", and rightly so, I'm afraid. Anyway, the moment arrives when the missus meets the Stooges, introduced as three "refugees." No buyer's remorse here, no questioning that they're adults rather than children. Curly gets caught up in the moment, saying "Mammy" several times, in a performance that no one's allowed to like in this day and age. We grow so weary of flop sweat in this age of post-internet ennui. The triumph of Steven Wright. James Gunn's Super obviously borrowed from where Curly ends up knocking over the chair the missus is sitting in, WITH THE MISSUS STILL IN IT. He falls as well; otherwise it wouldn't be funny. The butler says "Luncheon is served." Butlers never learn to not say that when the Stooges are in a room. This butler somehow doesn't get knocked over when the boys run past him... you know what? This one's not one of my favorites, and it is past my bedtime, so I'm going to cut this short. A Stooge film can't be good when the big pie fight only has one pie thrown in it. One pie thrown by the Stooges, one ax thrown AT the Stooges in response. I'm never watching this one again.

**1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Adam and Andrew Scheinman

You might not know it from his IMDb entry, but Andrew Scheinman's a big deal. Or perhaps you would. Check out his top four right now. Stand By Me? A Few Good Men? Princess Bride? Harry Met Sally? Oh but he's not just the king of the late 80s-early 90s... watch an episode of Seinfeld, and you're bound to see his name. Oh, THAT's gotta be worth something! Let's just say he doesn't have to struggle to get work.
They say it about every decade now. If you remember the early 80s, you weren't really there, man! Of course, if it's the 80s, it's because most people in L.A. at the time were all coked up, their hearts all a-twitter, running around to get things done. Andrew did two movies back to back with the Hestons: titan Charlton and son Fraser C. I guess this might partly explain Castle Rock's future involvement with Needful Things. And then, after working with Albert Brooks on Modern Romance, it was time to regroup, and take a short break. But, not for long, apparently, because Rob Reiner was about to go places, baby. Three movies in three years? Even ol' Meathead was gonna need some help with pulling that one off. Andrew isn't credited with Spinal Tap, so we'll leave that one aside. While you're at it, Andrew, take this Jeffrey Stott kid under your wing. Teach him a thing or two. Hands off Little Big League, though, Jeff. That one's all mine!!!!
Yes, the Scheinmans have separately had careers a little more equitable than, say, Lawrence and Mark Kasdan. Andrew appears to have been the mother log that fell first, and upon which brother Adam and Jeffrey Stott have taken nutrients from. But Andrew's making a big comeback with Rob Reiner's 2012 picture... MEATHEAD!!!! Wow! It's not even based on a Stephen King book or anything! Unless Guy Thomas is yet another pseudonym...

Marriage Power!

I should probably include these two in my Auteur Watch series... nah, never mind. Hunky auteur Len Wiseman and his wife, superstar Kate Beckinsale, once again storm the winter box office with the latest installment of the Underworld saga. Another chance for people to discharge guns, and look totally awesome while doing it. The totally awesome part is what separates the movies from your average NRA meeting. Meanwhile, Red Tails, the George Lucas tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen, comes in at #2... a sad weekend indeed. But it was only $6 million behind first place, if that's any consolation! In even worse news, BOTH of Spielberg's pics fall off the top 10. There is no joy in Marin County, the mighty Whiz Kids have struck out. Marky Mark's latest falls to #3, Soderbergh debuts at #5, and the critically maligned Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close debuts at #4. I came to that conclusion because Ebert gave it ... gave it 2.5 stars (out of 4), and The Onion gave it an F. The harder screenwriter Eric Roth works these days, the worse grades he gets! How's THAT work?

Wall Street 1... Ballistic: Fox vs. Gekko

Welp, you gotta hand it to Oliver Stone... okay, maybe not, but a film nut like me has got to. Think of him as the Tyler Perry of the late 80s: one film a year for eight years in a row! Okay, not as impressive or as lucrative as Tyler, but you get the idea. Ollie turned away from Vietnam for a second to address the financial crisis of his time. Kinda sad how very, very current it is in the wake of all that's transpired.
Now, if you had a good economics professor like I did, you know that it all started with Reagan. I prefer to think of it as a cookie jar. Let's say that in 1980 we had a relatively full cookie jar. Now it's empty. The rich people needed all the money more, so they slowly trickled it back to themselves. And a show like Breaking Bad is now all the rage: America is now the proverbial frat boy sitting on the couch as the rest of the world surpasses us, so we go for the low hanging ingenuity fruit like making the Cadillac of crystal meth. What I want to know is: when's Mike coming back to get his revenge? Far as I know, near as I can tell, he's not quite dead. Anyway, there's gotta be a way to blame Obama for all of this...
As for the film itself, well, I'll try not to spoil it too much if you haven't seen it. Young Bud Fox... good name! Bud works at your local mom 'n pop brokerage firm named Steinem-Paglia... I mean, ... damn. Gotta work to remember what it was. But that's me all over: I mean, Steinem's not exactly a name synonymous with high finance, right? In this hyperlink age we live in? Charlie works alongside future Scrubs star John McGinley, and I couldn't help but think that Oliver 'n Weiser modeled this a bit on some old 40s screwball comedy, just slightly. Or maybe Stone sees himself as fully contemporary, with nary an homage to the Hollywood of old his parents weren't a part of. Oscar winner Michael Douglas plays the sleazy Bain Capital-esque vulture capitalist named Gordon Gekko... what is that, Dutch? Think a combination of Trump and Leona Helmsley, but who knows a thing or two about business.
For some reason, Bud Fox has a hard time getting to meet Gekko, but that was the era. Back then, if a guy like Gekko saw a kid who merely looked like his future heir apparent, he had to jump through hoops to prove it. Bud finds he's ill prepared to leap into the deep end of the pool, and he quickly exhausts the few good ideas he has: in this case, winning stock tips. He finally squanders his last bargaining chip: his dad, the union steward at Bluestar Airlines, gave him the inside scoop on a favorable court ruling about to be handed down. Gekko, however, plays both sides: he throws Bud some business his way, then later on scolds Bud for not having enough insider info.: "Unless your dad works at another company,..." Drat. The IMDb doesn't have that line, but it does have a similar line, so post me about SOMETHING ELSE PLEASE!! David Mamet couldn't have written Gekko's dialogue better... and he probably would've made Gekko say "Things change," for starters.
I won't ruin the plot any further, but I will protest on Daryl Hannah's behalf. Wrong for the part? For shame. Why, I can't think of a part she was wrong for! Well, maybe Legal Eagles... There's one other Gekko speech that's quite telling, indeed: it's the one about how "The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth..." How things have changed. Guess I better see the sequel at some point, based on that line alone. There's also a similar speech that the Steve Martin character gives in Grand Canyon... hey! Stop throwing stuff at me.
There's some experimental lighting in Wall Street, courtesy of multiple Oscar winner Robert Richardson. This was just a couple years before he went through his phase of very bright lights dangling over tables, washing everything out. Forget Daryl Hannah; John Cusack would've been perfect for Bud Fox... but he wasn't in Platoon, was he? Plus, it wouldn't have had the same resonance with Martin Sheen as the father, so you gotta like that. People had a problem with Daryl Hannah, but not Charlie Sheen's eyebrows. When he's happy, furrowed brows. When he's mad, furrowed brows. My viewing companion thought... SPOILER ALERT... when he was being escorted from the office, the guy in real life probably wouldn't cry. But I came to Charlie's defense on that one: just a little something for the Oscar voting block, because THEY don't know how hard it is to cry on cue... right?

Great triple bill with: Inside Job, Other People's Money

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

Oyster: 9, Curly: 2.

SPOILERS ALERTS!!! Once again, maybe I'm wrong, but somewhere along the way I came to the conclusion that Dutiful but Dumb is probably the best Curly short of them all. Oh sure, others have their high points, and sure, DBD is no Micro-Phonies, the greatest Curly short of them all, but if you had to pick one... and that's what film critics always have to do, pick one... if you had to go to that proverbial, apocryphal desert island you always see in one-panel cartoons, Dutiful But Dumb is the Three Stooges short I would be compelled to take. It's got everything: democracy vs. fascism, joie de nouriture, giant novelty cigars, harmonica music, and of course Curly getting strangled by the neck and having his face shoved into the vat of chemicals in which a picture is getting developed. Well, one can't help but appreciate the extra effort the boys put in on those all-too-rare occasions.

ACT ONE

Mel Gibson apparently loves the Stooges, even though they had Jewish sympathies. But surely Mel is conflicted over the plot of this one, as they play paparazzi... and I think we all know how he feels about the paparazzi. Clearly the opposite of how Lady Gaga feels about them. In this case, the camera-wielding psychos are chasing after a poor, blameless job creator named Percival de Puyster... better check the Wikipedia entry to see who his real life equivalent is. And even though Percy seems a bit effete at times, he does have strength enough to keep a big handful of the Kodak stormtroopers out of his honeymoon suite, who clearly have wooden mallets in their hands and Priapus on their minds. Percy and his bride have an exchange worthy of S.J. Perelman: she says "Have you forgotten all your other wives?" Percy says "Completely... except on Alimony Day." But just as the woodpecker and the pine cone keep evolving to stay one step ahead of the other, the paparazzi are suddenly getting taller! Oh wait... it's just Moe sitting on Larry's shoulders. So even though it might look like Moe's grabbing his crotch to make a right turn, it's actually Larry's head. Ultimately, this new-fangled height is not enough to get the picture, and their failure is resounding.... Boy, Moe's EXTRA mad in this one!
I believe it was David Steinberg who first offered up a Stooge philosophy, strikingly similar to Orwell's theory of the three classes. Moe is the upper class, Larry is the middle class looking to trade places with the upper class, and Curly longs for equality amongst all peoples... in other words, bat$#it crazy. But Curly's not immune to the occasional risk if there's reward to be had, and... SPOILER ALERT... he becomes the Trojan paparazzi, and gets a perfect picture of the happy couple, worthy of an informal prom photo. (Curly 2:19) Curly gives a "n'yuk n'yuk" the likes of which I've never heard before. Actually, this whole film is pretty chock full of n'yuks, which is probably why it's one of my favourites.
Meanwhile, back at the lab... seriously! Okay, the darkroom, where the photo is busy developing. While we wait, Curly tells us the parable of the three watches. Moe's obviously not in the mood for it, and he waits a good long while with both fingers outstretched for the first eye poke of the proceedings. I guess he wanted to make sure to hit Curly in the forehead, but had trouble negotiating Curly's miner cap. Larry keeps the hits coming. He runs in from Stage Left and says "I can't find the negative!" Moe asks Curly "How about the positive?" Hard to say how extensive photography was among the masses at the time, but why waste a good opposite joke? As usual, Moe doesn't like Curly's answer to the question, but Curly's punishment is rather harsh, I felt, especially when I first saw this one as a tween, but I'll try to leave that out of it for now. Let's just say that Alex's beating and near-drowning in the farmyard trough in A Clockwork Orange was child's play in comparison.
Needless to say, the simple act of developing one photograph cannot be handled by the Stooges. And even the much simpler act of exiting the darkroom ends up having disastrous consequences when done by the Stooges. Of course, surely some of the other Whack Magazine employees are culpable, as they left a bunch of dry timber around for the Stooges' flint to set ablaze: there's a domino-esque line of six prints leading to the editor's desk. The assistant editor acts as the seventh domino as the Stooges violently emerge from the darkroom. Sadly, the picture that Curly took ends up looking like a picture of Curly with his face in the developer. The boys get fired on the spot and start to pack their things, when opportunity arises. The initial scenario that sets the scene has finally ended, which paves the way for the scenario that will consume the rest of the film. In a plot structure similar to We Want Our Mummy, there's a suicide mission that gets rebranded as a good job opportunity. The Stooges, of course, triumphantly accept. They leave in a hurry, and Curly knocks the dominoes... er, the prints, over again. This time, however, there's eight instead of six.

ACT TWO

Scene: the fictional country of Freedonia... I mean, Vulgaria. There seems to be only one law in Vulgaria: no cameras. Of course, if the Stooges are able to get cameras into your country when they're illegal, well... you might as well hire them to work at Customs. As fate or the plot would have it, the Vulgarian stormtroopers, led by Lou Dobbs' great grandfather Bud Jamison, have captured another photographer, and are marching him past the Stooges at just the right moment. Moe's still in a bad mood and breaks his flash bulb over Curly's behelmeted bald head, but the Stooges put their differences aside when opportunity presents itself. An execution? What a photo op! Curly tells the intended victim to put a gun to the head of the senior arresting official. The Stooges eventually figure out what's going on and take off running. Sensing bigger game, the cops go after the Stooges and the original arrestee takes off... snapping a picture first, of course. The Stooges run quickly, but without the proper compass, and end up running into a giant Vulgarian jail cell.
The boys are now in casual Vulgarian prison garb. Now, when I and my mates watched this when we were young, my mates noticed these three holes in the wall the Stooges are standing in front of. They're a little bit lighter than the rest of the wall, and they turn black when we hear the sound of bullets. Ah, showbiz. For some reason, I'm suddenly reminded of the ending of The In-Laws... the 1979 version. The Vulgarians honor the boys' request for one last request: just one last smoke. The cigarette companies should be all over this part, if only the boys didn't go for a cigar. According to Wikipedia, Curly pulls out a cigar "the length of a hero sandwich." Now, a hero ain't nothin' but a sandwich, but Curly indeed buys them some time, and it may be the only time Moe doesn't smash Curly's cigar.
Next scene: both executioners and victims have fallen asleep, and Curly's sleeping with a tiny piece of the cigar left in his mouth. The executioners wake up first and spot their big chance. The Stooges wake up just in time. Unfortunately, they used their last match, and Curly tries to light the cigar by inhaling on it. This backfires on Curly, some might say literally! To cut to the chase... I know, it's too late for that at this point... the executioners take their shot again, but the Stooges have a few tricks up their sleeves, and their heads tucked into the necks of their shirts. They're able to make a getaway this way, and a better one at that.

And now, we see the thing that the editors of Whack Magazine were talking about: a whiz-bang new technology that can make a gun fire by itself. The editors called it a "ray machine." The Vulgarian upper echelons refer to it as a "poofer." They've even turned it into a verb: "Proceed with the poofing!" The upper echelons, however, get wind of three picture-taking spies, so they have to leave the room. Little do they know how close these spies are, and pretty soon the Stooges end up using the "poofer" with hilarious consequences. How and why do they ever let Curly be in charge? The echelons rush back to the office, and the boys hide. As you can see from the jpeg I chose, Moe hides in the lamp, Curly the radio. Larry's the odd man out this time, but he must've found a great hiding spot not worth caring about. But let's take a brief time out for all the would-be screenwriters out there. In clearly what is an homage to the conceit of The Front Page, and the many many remakes it spawned, Curly alone has to keep the bigwigs from looking inside that radio. Cue what has to be the greatest Stooge music interlude ever, including a not-so-subtle jab at Harpo Marx.  If they don't have that minute of celluloid in Heaven, I ain't going. That's all there is to it.

ACT THREE

Oh, before I continue, I would be amiss if I didn't mention the little laugh Curly gives at 2:48. A true craftsman. Anyway, the Stooges get the best of the bigwigs and head out into the Vulgarian air in disguise. Curly gets freaked out by a bayonet and the boys run away, following Curly's lead. And all this time I thought Moe was the alpha Stooge! A cook rings a dinner bell, and the four of them run to eat. The cook ultimately can't keep up with the Stooges, and he falls, making a noise similar to the noise made a little earlier in the pic, at about 1:48 to be more precise. Someday I've got to hire someone to make these connections a little clearer, or at least YouTube can figure out how to position the films automatically with links. That'll be someone's next billion. Anyway, the scene now is a café, just your typical Vulgarian café. For me, personally, the thing that separates this Stooge short from the typical Stooge short is that it's very good about hiding its gratuitous scene stretchers. Some might complain about them spending the rest of the pic in some nondescript café, but Curly manages to make it work. First, he runs afoul of a bottle of dry ice... I mean, strong Vulgarian liquor. So strong, in fact, it makes his whole body violently dizzy, not just his head. It's classy, however; there's no vomiting. My description doesn't do it justice, of course. And then... the oyster soup arrives. Kashrut aside, it's a fun scene, and the Stooges would try it again in the later Income Tax Sappy, but with a resourceful lobster claw. To go back in history, there was a similar scene in the Hal Roach Taxi Boys short, Thundering Taxis. But the Taxi Boys aren't on DVD yet, are they? Damn straight. I hate to have that attitude, but clearly the Taxi Boys have neither the number of shorts under their belt... I mean, films to their credit, nor do they have the consistency of character that Laurel & Hardy or the Stooges has, Billy Gilbert aside. Anyway, the point being, it's hard to enjoy a bowl of milk... bowl of soup unless you got some crackers. Everybody knows that. But even oysters like crackers, too, and the war in the café is on. Curly loses several crackers to the lone live oyster in his soup, but he manages to get the better of that damn oyster a couple times. Note his gales of laughter! Some might call it prejudice, but clearly this is not your average oyster. The oyster eventually gets the better of Curly, just after Curly got the better of the oyster with the pepper-covered cracker, so Curly takes out his gun and fires just over the oyster's head several times. A sad reminder that no one wins when there's gun violence.

EPILOGUE

The three bigwigs come to, find the Stooges, and the Stooges are carried away by riflemen. The riflemen have bayonets on their rifles, and the Stooges are hanging by their belt loops from the bayonets. I probably didn't describe that quite right, but needless to say the wire technicians must've been busy that day. One of the finest Stooge shorts ever made.

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - John Requa and Glenn Ficarra

Despite the worldwide internet blackout, we're still open! Reason enough to stop PIPA/SOPA... whatever it is. This is one party that shouldn't be shut down.
Well, I haven't been able to prove it yet, but I did recently see a VH1 documentary about "Weird Al" Yankovic, and one of the people talking about Al was named John Ficarra... oh, right. The blackout. I'm going to assume that, as hard as it is to get into showbiz as it is, there's a relation. The son does better than the father. Only the son of the showbiz father would be crazy enough to actually TRY to make it in showbiz. Somewhere along the way, he found a Requa to cling to. The guy must be talented... or at least, make Ficarra look good in comparison.
It all started at the tail end of the 90s, with Clinton's popularity at an all time high. We didn't even need to listen to his speeches, because we knew he was on the job, making the world at least seem like a better place. Klasky Csupo clones were everywhere thanks to the Simpsons, so why not try to write for one? The Wild Thornberries just might do. Paul Simon might even do a song for it! How cool/slightly tinged with sadness is that?
But these high profile gigs don't last forever, and something called computer animation was finally grown up and ready to really ruin the natural world. Jumanji was a mere warm-up act. How about talking dogs and screaming cats? With this surprise hit raising the boats of all the people involved in it, it was time for the next generation to take over Hollywood. Cats & Dogs director Lawrence Guterman quickly slit his throat with Son of the Mask, while Requarra cozied up to the Weinsteins, and somehow ended up with the Coens as well... they are the catalyst that cools ancient Hollywood feuds. Their project? Turning a Coen short story into the infamous anti-Christmas movie, Bad Santa. Drunk off this second surprise success, they fell into the Hollywood trap and worked on another movie with "Bad" in the title, and Billy Bob Thornton starring in the movie. The Bad News Bears reboot was birthed, and it was decidedly time to step back and take a short break. They would not be called back to do the reboots of Bad News Bears in Breaking Training or The Bad News Bears Go to Japan... come to think of it, nobody would. It was at this point when Ficarrequa said to itself, "Well, Hell! We're just as smart as the idiots who direct these pieces of sh...oe leather, why don't we?" And that they did. Big time. I Love You, Philip Morris and Crazy, Stupid, Love are but a taste. The best days are ahead for all of us with FicarRequa making our movies. A toast to the continued reign of Requa-carra! May it last a thousand years, sir!

Entourage, Season 17

Women love him. Men want to be him. Yes, Marky Mark's latest brainless actioner takes the cake at #1 this week. Meanwhile, we get a glimpse into the near future of nostalgia, as 1991's Beauty and the Beast comes in strong at #2. Could Aladdin be next? Somehow, I seriously doubt it; maybe they'll release the second one with Homer as the genie. Tee hee hee! In a surprise to me, 65-year old Dolly Parton hurling rolls at Queen Latifah comes in at #4. Can a sequel to 9 to 5 be far behind? Surely there's a script for it bouncing around Hollywood! Did Colin Higgins leave nothing behind? Last, but not least, Gary Oldman leaves the top 10 all too quickly, but Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher debuts at #10. Will it last only a week? We can only hope. She seems to be taking cues from the The King's Speech playbook. She's running out of Oscar options, or maybe the sky's the limit, who knows? Not enough colorful characters anymore.

Red vs. The Mechanic: Which Kicks More Ass?

Kind of unfair to compare these two titans of the action genre, but they are similar in some ways: both are about those special, specialized types of people that you hopefully only find in the movies, both feature lots of explosions and flying bullets, and both kinda move so fast that it's hard for anything to really resonate and take hold, even a couple hours after watching. So while both are quite similar, they do part ways in terms of tone: Red being a PG-13 comedy, and The Mechanic with dramatic pretensions and an R rating that it doesn't shy away from.

BURN AFTER READING 2: THE RE-ENLISTENING

Somehow, these kind of movies are showing their new cookie cutter molds. You can only stay ahead of them for so long, unfortunately. But as with The Last Boy Scout, Bruce Willis gets to play a hero with a deep, proud history. This time, he's a retired CIA operative... now, what are the odds that he was the best at what he did? And, to a lesser extent, still does?
As with all movies like this, it's a little bit of everything. Sensory plot overload! It's part Midnight Run, part Blues Brothers... one character actually quips "We're getting the band back together!" SPOILER ALERT: There's a coverup that's connected to one of the highest government offices in the land. Well, we can't help but expect a slight continuation of Dubya-era movie politics. There's a very rich history indeed of films between 2001 and 2009 advocating the overthrow of a bad government! So I guess you could say this is part Eagle Eye as well. The postcards were cute, though, denoting each stop on the road trip.
The filmmakers matter less and less these days, the more things get done with CGI, but I would like to point out one name I recognized: cameraman Florian Ballhaus, progeny of Scorsese collaborator cameraman Michael Ballhaus... I'm assuming. There's a lot more shot set-ups these days for a two hour movie, aren't there? As for the cast, my viewing companions wanted to see it more for Malkovich than anybody, but I must confess that Helen Mirren looked rather fetching at the big party at the end. Peter Greenaway had a good eye, no? All in all, not a bad way to spend the evening, even though it wasn't terribly memorable, either. As a serious film critic, I can't rate this too highly, of course.

***

TRANSPORTER 4: THE TRANSPORTERING... AND THE MENTORING

What are the odds that Jason Statham is the best at what he does? I went in a clean slate on this, just after Red, and after the ladies went to bed. This is almost perfect Cinemax fare, featuring a couple gratuitous sex scenes, but alas, it has too much plot and too many actual actors in it. Ben Foster, for example, does okay as the troubled kid, and the kind of drinking he does in this movie is not what you normally see... at least, not in the booze commercials on TV. As for drinking in other movies, my viewing experience is not that extensive. Seems like people are either alcoholics or they're not; Ben's character lives sort of in between, which seemed novel to me.
I didn't know this was a remake, but the name Carlino at the end did ring a slight bell. Then, of course, the IMDb reveals all. The mastermind behind such hits as Class and The Great Santini penned the original script some 40 odd years ago, and I have it on the highest authority that the ending was a tad different. Statham doesn't trust his audiences yet; I'll leave it at that.
The action scenes border on the ridiculous, but they seem reasonable enough compared to other Besson-produced fare... I STILL say there's a connection. He got that Besson name somehow! In striking back at the system that gave him life, then promptly screwed him, Statham doesn't go as high as the Vice President of the United States, but the corporate equivalent, perhaps. And even though Tony Goldwyn is now best known as a celebrated actor's director, he can still play the smarmy bad guy with the best of 'em. So ultimately, I guess this is not something you'd necessarily want to watch with your drinking buddies, but I still don't feel I was manly enough to watch it. As with most things in life, it's a tightrope act.

***

-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

The Stooges go to prison...

I almost remembered the title of the film I was thinking of that sort of parallels this week's Stooge film, So Long, Mr. Chumps. It's a film from 2006 called Let's Go To Prison. At the time, the airwaves were carpet-bombed with TV trailers for the movie, and I couldn't help but think to myself that... well, it just didn't look good. Even the normally ultra-reliable Dylan Baker couldn't rise above the lines he was given, and Chi McBride was given a thankless role. Then I actually saw part of the film: the premise involves a guy who CHOOSES to go to prison in order to see a guy that he had framed, and to watch him suffer some more. That was the main part that I had a problem with, the rest of the film aside. As it turns out, it's a premise as old as prisons themselves...

ACT ONE

We start out innocently enough with the Stooges in an unusual occupation: cleaning up messes they didn't even make. The three of them work over the same littered stretch of wide studio lot street. Each has a giant pushbroom, and... SPOILER ALERT, the three of them collide, letting out the loud "woodblock" sound. Curly says "Swing it!", so Moe kicks Curly in the ass. And rightfully so, frankly. It's about this point that the three split up to cause more damage. Curly tussles with a large truck, and Larry ends up accidentally spearing Moe in the ass with one of those pointy stick things that garbagemen sometimes use to pick up garbage. No reprisal for Larry; not on-screen, anyway.
It escalates from there. Curly runs afoul of a particularly clingy piece of flypaper. Moe looks on angrily as Curly struggles with it... guess what happens next? Let me put it this way: usually, Larry ends up getting his hair stuck and torn. They decided to switch it up this time. From there, we find the story strand that will carry us through the rest of the pic: Curly looks down and finds an envelope full of oil bonds amongst the street rubbish. Screenwriter Clyde Bruckman couldn't help but pay homage to Sherlock Jr., in which close to the same thing happens to Buster. Just money back in Buster's day, not your fancy modern oil bonds. Curly ends up in a heavily over-watered patch of grass and tries to take a bath. Larry takes considerable exception to this. Curly ends up slapping Moe in the face, runs away, and runs back toward the camera, using the grass as a slip and slide, but doesn't end up paralyzing himself, thankfully.
This is probably where Act Two should be, but I'm going to wait until the 5:40 mark or so. Fortunately for the Stooges, the envelope of oil bonds is marked with a name and address. The Stooges return the oil bonds to their rightful owner. The rightful owner, one Mr. B.O. Davis, gives the Stooges a reward and tasks them with finding "an honest man." You'd think that what the Stooges did would qualify them, but this possibility is ultimately not considered. There's no film otherwise... oh, right, an honest man with "executive ability." In other words, do what your local oligarchs tell you to do. How hard is that? I guess the Republicans don't want to hold up So Long, Mr. Chumps as an example of how well our current system works. It's far too common. For example, Moe asks "Can we have some money on account?" Curly's proviso: "Yeah, on account of we're broke." Of course, Curly also just tried to eat a banana peel, throwing away the soft, icky inner part.

ACT TWO

Might as well break it here. We start Act Two with the Stooges having put their new money immediately to work: each is wearing a nice fur coat and a tall top hat. But this is most certainly not the time for a pie fight. Not with actual nice clothes. They're busy trying to find an honest man with executive ability by leaving a wallet on the sidewalk. Sounds better than any employment agency to me. Professor Moe explains: "An honest man will return the wallet. A dishonest man will keep it." The first customer's kinda funny: a blind man with a cane spies the wallet, and grabs the money, running away before the Stooges can grab him. They get the second guy by putting gun powder in the wallet, and activating the gun powder with a battery. Eat your shirt, MacGruber! They've got the wallet attached to a wire and not a string, by the way. I always leave out the important details like that. The man manages to escape, but leaves behind him a smoldering pair of pants. "This is disgusting!", quips Moe. Time is stretched out as Moe and Curly fight over Curly's wanting to smoke a cigar.
Fortunately, fate steps in to help the boys on their quest to find an honest man. It's kind of a shaggy dog story... in that it involves an actual shaggy dog. A dog picks up their wallet and hands it to the boys. The dog signals with his tail (on a wire, perhaps?) for the Stooges to follow. The dog leads them to a distraught woman. The woman tells the Stooges that her sweetheart, Percy Pomeroy, is an honest man, but he's currently languishing in jail, wrongfully accused. Executive ability is left out of the equation at this point. The Stooges decide to get themselves arrested in order to get Pomeroy out of jail. This is where I part company with the Stooges, but I slog on nevertheless, the loyal Stooge short reviewer that I am... oops! Daily Show time!

Act 2.5. The hunt for unlawful activity begins. The Stooges' plan to get thrown into the big house: assaulting a cop. They find a cop, and kick him in the ass. An on-looker passing by at the same time starts to laugh. The laughter being the worse of the two offenses, the laugher happily gets carted off to the big house himself. Curly decides to stick up someone, and Moe and Larry go to find a cop. They get back to Curly to find that... SPOILER ALERT! The guy's got the gun on Curly now! There's a mighty struggle as the cop tries to subdue the man. The gun ends up getting pointed at the Stooges; they rightfully n'yaah-n'yaah in response and duck. Now, this part you might find a little troubling: the cop wrestles the gun out of the bad guy's hand and gives it to Curly. Anyone? Anyone at all? Well, it does come in handy for the next scene, so that makes it okay. We'll just let that alone for now. Larry hits Curly in the tummy, but Curly doesn't bend forward. Moe then hits Curly in the belly, and he bends forward. Then, Moe hits Curly in the head to righten him back up. Curly, the class act he is, doesn't unload the gun into Moe, even though he clearly could have, and probably should have. If I'm not mistaken, that's the second time in this pic that Curly gets the ol' double whammy like that! ...damn. Now I gotta go back and catalog THAT too? I'm just not that good. Fortunately, this all happens in front of the police station, so the three scofflaw-heads don't have far to go to cause some real damage.
They go to police chief Vernon Dent, and Curly tells Vernon that they just held up the First National Bank and shot two guards. Vernon is rightly skeptical, and more than a little sarcastic, frankly. Not that I can hardly blame him. But this is still a comedy, so a call comes in a few seconds later... guess what happened? The First National Bank was just robbed! Two guards shot! Off the cops go. Vernon slams the doors behind him, causing the light fixture to drop and dangle, but not quite hit the ground. Here's where the true writing genius comes into play, all you would-be Joe Eszterhaseses out there... A lone cop walks under this dangling light fixture, and the Stooges push him out of the way. They all land on the ground in a heap, and Curly gets hit with said fixture. It's the act of slight heroism that gets them the jail time they wanted...

ACT THREE

Setting: Hoose Gow rockpile. The Stooges are busy smashing rocks... but they manage to sneak in a round of bowling while the guards are away. The guards aren't away very long, so it's back to the pile of rocks. Either they aren't working very hard to break the rocks, or the rocks are made of balsa wood or something; probably very expensive prop rocks that need to be treated as carefully as Curly's head. This is Depression Era Cannery Row we're talking about, after all!
Suddenly, a large bee on a string starts getting dangled in front of Curly's face. Moe helps out his dear friend and brother the only way he knows how, and swats at the bee with his sledgehammer. Fortunately for Curly, his head's harder than the hammer and it gets mashed all out of shape... as though it were made of some sort of soft modeling clay!
Good visual joke: to match the convicts' striped uniforms, they've got a striped horse pulling a wagon. Not-so-good choreography: the lame excuse Moe gives himself for falling headlong into the path of Curly's sledgehammer. Payback's a b... a headache, let's call it.
Seeing as how this one's kinda lame, I'm going to cut to the chase. They eventually find Pomeroy, as they recognize his number: "41144". It's kinda rare for what's his face to have the kind of initial reaction to the Stooges that he has, but you gotta stretch your acting chops sometime! Given that the boys never stray too far from whatever tools they have at hand, the last job they were given, fortunately, was to do some painting. Curly used this to his advantage by stealing a guard's lunch meat and replacing it with a coat of black paint. This time, the Stooges and the honest man paint themselves guard uniforms so they can escape. Did they remember to paint both sides of their bodies? I'd hate to spoil that one, despite everything. But I will spoil the last "surprise": B.O. Davis was actually a crooked crook, and just as the foursome try to make their escape, B.O.'s being brought to prison. The boys give him the Stooge treatment and Curly says "See you out at the rockpile!"

EPILOGUE

Moe and Larry are breaking rocks on Curly's head. At least, until they get to the third rock. Curly says "Wait a minute! That's a real one! I'm no fool... n'yuk, n'yuk, n'yuk..." Nice try, Curly, but I'm afraid you three are still consigned to a lifetime of being accosted by joyous fans on the street and getting ACTUALLY poked in the eyes by them. Don't forget to do that special block!

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Frank and Mark Ridley

Close enough. Frank's got a part in the upcoming Inside Llewyn Davis... incidentally, get in touch with Kati Batchelder, as there's still time to play an extra in Inside Llewyn Davis! Kewl! Brother Mark is apparently a big-shot stand-up comedian... maybe not Jeff Dunham big, but still quite big and respected in the industry in general, so that's nothing to sneeze at. Okay, technically, the Ridleys aren't auteurs, but they're good enough to be in a Coen brothers movie, so they must have at least a Master's degree in something. That seems to be how it works. It's like working with Stanley Kubrick, but clearly the Coens can get stuff done a little bit faster. Frank was also in I'm Paige Wilson, but he played Oscar Tuscon in that one.

Devil inside, devil inside, every single movie's the Devil inside

Gotta give the Devil his due, and at least capitalize his name! Yes, people are ready to be scared again and The Devil Inside scares up more B.O. than Tom Cruise's latest flick. Once again, I missed all the P.R. for D.I., so I don't know if it's another one of these low-budget things filmed on a cellphone or what. And why's that girl afraid of that tattoo on the inside of her lip? She's going to be in the Neo-Dolce Vita inner circle in no time! Just like Casey Anthony used to be... Meanwhile, back at the film lab, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy debuts at #9... is that based on a poem or what? The Internet will do my thinking and remembering for me from now on! Because I gotta go!!

Three Stooges: Non-sexual 'Boobs in Arms'

Come to think of it, that's not entirely true, as there is a subplot involving making a husband jealous... a slight nod to Laurel and Hardy's The Fixer Uppers, but never mind. A classic Stooge is still a classic Stooge, and this is one of the great ones, IMHO. The elements are just right, the setpiece that stretches out the length of the film is well hidden, and... I dunno, it ultimately just works, like Micro-Phonies! I'm not a big fan of Micro-Phonies, however, but we'll get to that one soon enough, perhaps by the Presidential election. Someone else do the sums on that one for me.
Well, I'm under increasing pressure these days now that I don't have any more homework, so I can't devote the usual time I do to my Stooge reviews, but I'll do what I can here. It's kind of a shame, really, because the Three Act structure is very sharply defined here. Something about war brings out the best in the Stooges, and they finally draw a direct correlation between war and greeting cards, a connection that's rarely talked about in the lame-stream media. The boys start out peddling greeting cards, and run afoul of a particularly disgruntled customer. They end up head-butting him into a laundry ... you know, when they've got two panels in the sidewalk that's used for laundry? The Stooges have relied on those many a time before. SPOILER ALERT: So, they end up running into the guy's wife, they end up counseling her on how to win her husband back, who she feels no longer loves her. Curly ends up pitching some woo with the lady; she ends up fainting in response. It's a delicate balancing act of making the husband just jealous enough so that he doesn't end up killing Curly. They don't pull it off. So that's two run-ins with the same guy. The third run in: the boys end up enlisting in the Army, and the guy's their Sergeant! Gotta love that. More high-jinks.
Soon the boys end up at war with a country that's not quite into the Fascism game as good as Germany or Japan or Italy. Why, even the guy who turns and looks turns up as an enemy soldier! There's also a guy who screams rather loudly after sitting on his own spiky helmet... and rightfully so. The boys get one last chance to stick it to that Sergeant fellow, but they were high on laughing gas so they weren't totally aware of it. Sadly, actor Richard Fiske actually was killed in action in World War II, and died in LeCroix, France; everything indeed did happen to him. Still, a fine Stooge short, and it belongs squarely on that short list of the ones I tend to watch over and over again when it comes time to select a DVD for a bunch of us to watch on the telly... so old fashioned, no?

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

I want my money back!

Welp, it's close to my bedtime, so no time to make a visual to go along with the review. As a loyal reader of this thing will know by now, any film worthy of Oscar gold usually deals with prejudice. My own personal prejudice, when it comes to the making of a movie, is about who is making the movie. Take Michael Bay, for example. Another example is the makers of the movie 'Kick-Ass.' Now, I liked Kick-Ass as much as the next fanboy pushing 40, but for some reason I don't trust those people to make a serious movie about the Mossad hunting a Nazi in hiding. To be fair, given the script and the actors involved, they did pretty good, and dare I say it, even half-ass nomination worthy. However, the story threads come untied as they attempt to hold two seemingly separate movies together into one cohesive whole.
Take the casting, for starters. Look at the actors involved here, one by one. We've got Sam Worthington, Tom Wilkinson, Marton Csokas and Ciaran Hinds. Two actors assigned to the same parts, separated by about 30 years or so. Now, you'd think the natural pairing would be Sam and Tom, and Marton and Ciaran, right? I mean... LOOK @ THEIR FACES!!! As it turns out, the parts are switched. Sam grows up to become Ciaran, mostly I think because he's the good guy in the story. Sorry, SPOILER ALERT. I mean, let's face it. Sam can't play a bad guy. He's come too far in too short a time; we'll leave Terminator 4 aside for the moment.
Okay, so that's the first major complaint out of the way, but I'm perfectly willing to grant that Oscar-nominated director John Madden does what he can to keep the film in Oscar territory, especially the first half of the story. I guess I might as well outline the story at this point. Basically, three Mossad agents go into Cold War-era East Germany to track down a notorious Nazi war criminal... I forget already; his nickname was the "Butcher of Birkenau" or something. In a film of this magnitude, you only go after the most notorious criminal, of course. And as much as I'd like to believe that the Mossad can be incompetent at times, even the first half of the story unravels a little bit in its own way.
I wouldn't dream of ruining the big twist in the story any more than I already have, mostly by pointing out that there is a twist... can I say that there's a... nah, I can't say that. Helen Mirren plays one of the three Mossad agents involved in this little Cold War caper. She's retired in the modern half of the story, and her daughter has just written a novel about her Cold War exploits, when suddenly... she has to come out of retirement for one last heist! Let's put it that way. Now, Dame Mirren is 66 years old at the time of this writing, but that's the affliction of this modern era. Just judging from our celebrities, the average age is indeed higher and it would appear that Social Security is indeed in jeopardy of running out due to the overpopulation of the aging Baby Boomers. People just can't afford to retire any more. Indiana Jones will be 70 in 2012! Newt Gingrich admitted openly to being a 68 year-old grandfather! Ron Paul's a 74 year old grandfather! ... I assume he's a grandfather; Rand's certainly not going to stop the family name from perpetuating! Joe Biden will be 74 when HE runs for president in 2016. But back to actors: Al Pacino's just over 70, DeNiro's almost at 70. Our greatest action hero movie stars are getting on in years: Liam Neeson's pushing 60, Nicolas Cage's almost 50, Tom Cruise is almost 50... I only mention this because I couldn't help but reflect on all of this when the culmination of The Debt is a bloody knife fight between a 65 year old woman and a ... 90-something year old man? It's not something you see every day, I'll give you that!
And so, in summation, I think a single star rating can hardly describe my viewing experience of The Debt. Let's just say it was a fully-inflated 4-star balloon when I started, then the air slowly started leaking out during the first half, then much faster for the second half, until it was a very nearly totally empty balloon by the end. I'll split the difference and call it 2.5 stars, what the hell. Gotta run!

**1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Short Reviews - December 2011

Whew! Big image. Well, I'm attempting to compensate for another anemic monthly list of films. As everyone knows by now, a person will always cherish the pop culture they're exposed to as a teenager. For me, as with most people my age, having grown up with MTV, we can't help but think that Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer is the greatest music video ever made. Aside from The Eurhythmics' Missionary Man, it represents the most effort a pop star has put in to one video. I have the feeling that after the first hour, Annie Lennox probably screamed "GET THIS CRAP OFF MY FACE!!! NOW!!!!" Peter himself had a similar moment when they turned his face blue and put clouds on it. And of course, I couldn't just limit myself to that one video. I tried to keep everything in chronological order, but I just want to let the purists out there know up front that I failed. I prefer to think half miserably, but I'll ultimately leave it for you to decide. And keep the Geffen copyright lawyers busy, even though I'm not as bad as YouTube. If there's an artist out there who's advanced the music video arts farther than Peter Gabriel, well... frankly, I don't want to know about it. A toast to my man, P.G.!


Nuts - PONICSAN!!!!!!!!!!!!

RV - Barry Sonnenfeld... CALL YOUR MOTHER!!!!

Young Adult - What can be said? It's not easy being Diablo Cody. I mean, YOU try being Diablo Cody! Even for one day! Egg-zactly. You can't handle it. WTF. Move on dot org. OMGerz.

The Artist - Best movie Gene Kelly never made

Room in Rome - ... HELLO!?? What's that?

Rock of Ages - Tom Cruise rocks the rock opera...
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Tyler Perry's Good Deeds - Remake of Seven Pounds, but without the ickiness?

Tyler Perry's The Marriage Counselor - With Kim Kardashian? Now you've REALLY crossed the line, buddy.

Outland - Malcolm in the Middleton


Lego movie? Anyone?

Lego: The Adventures of Clutch Powers - That's it? Paul Michael Glazer? Sheesh...


...then again, there is Creed's "With Arms Wide Open", and that OK Go video. Okay, I stand corrected. Sorry.

Auteur Watch - Anthony and Joe Russo

Lucky bastids. As with Rod Daniel, the Russo's careers really took off once they dove headlong into TV. Unlike Rod Daniel, they're doing it at a time when TV quality is about on the same par with movie quality, which I think bodes less well for the cinema. The one Russo looks like if Joe Pesci and Robert Smigel mated, IMHO... actually, I guess you can't really use IMHO with an observation like that.
Anyway, they do seem to be two peas in a pod when it comes to working together. The 90s were their slowest period yet, but they stumbled into the silver screen racket in the 2000s with Welcome to Collinwood. What can one say? George Clooney in a wheelchair is better than no George Clooney at all. They forgot that rule with Batman & Robin, of course. TV work soon followed, but it was a return to the cinema with 2006's You, Me and Dupree. If you're anything at all like me, you will no doubt remember the accompanying USA Today article that asked "Are you a 'You', a 'Me' or a 'Dupree'?" It was soon after that Owen Wilson attempted suicide, but I like to think it was because of Cars. Or maybe just having to have lunch with a Disney executive, who knows.
And, of course, the 2010s look like they're going to be even more fruitful for the Russos. They should stave off another stab at the silver screen for as long as possible. They've already missed their 2009 gestation date. Be more like Terrence Malick, boys!

New year, same old box office...

Why do I get the feeling that Tom Cruise is buying a whole bunch of tickets himself? Still, god bless him and Brad Bird for the rising of M:I-4 like a phoenix to the top of the box office. Best Christmas movie ever, second only to the director's cut of Bad Santa. Meanwhile, War Horse rises, Tinin sinks a little... I thought Tintin was about a secret unicorn or something. They unwisely clipped the title, in my humble opinion. Gotta have that section after the colon these days if you're doing a sequel, and there are at least two other Tintin films planned, aren't there?! Chipwrecked, A Game of Shadows, Ghost Protocol... just those three.
No new debuts this week, as one would expect. People are still celebrating New Year's with New Year's Eve, and why not. Garry Marshall's still got it, but thematically he's come a long way down from Pretty Woman; again, my humble opinion. The testicular cancer drama The Descendants re-emerges at #10, which I'm pretty sure means Oscar buzz at this point. Another golden statuette for Payne? Why not. Why wait 'til he's so much older? The Darkest Hour is another drama about the time young stars spend in between their big money-making films: a lesson Robert Pattison has learned all too well. Where's the frickin' loyalty? Why do they stay away in droves from your art-house projects? I gotta go... Happy New Year, for those of you who celebrate such things!

Wait, wait... what was the title of the film?

Ah, when director Danny Boyle and actor Cillian Murphy get together... MAGIC! When Cillian and Christopher Nolan get together... Batman. Or, film in between Batmans! Will the Scarecrow be back for the final installment? ...apparently not. As long as it doesn't jump the shark the way Spider Man 3 did. Man, that was SO bad, they had to go and remake Spider Man 1! Erase Tobey Maguire from the Book of Spidey!
But, I digress again. On to the sci-fi genre. Tis a tricky business to get right, this whole sci-fi racket. You need a good plot and great special effects to get in the Blade Runner league. Movies don't proliferate as quickly as books do. The last time I was in a bookstore, a used bookstore, I couldn't help but marvel at the literally thousands and thousands of sci-fi books out there. Almost as numerous as the Harlequin novels! How does one distinguish itself from the pack? How does one make the cut to become a movie? Obviously, better minds than mine are hard at work on these various philosophical dilemmas.
Well, depending on how you feel about the movie, you're either going to go easy or go hard on the very plot of the whole enterprise. SPOILER ALERT. Here's the deal: the sun is dying, and a crackerjack crew of eight is flying a spaceship to the sun with a bomb in it... We'll leave that alone for a second. Needless to say, things don't go smoothly. Same reason the door of the "ark" in 2012 doesn't just close up and everything's okay. Why, you'd have to shave about 30 minutes off the running time of the movie! Sometimes you gotta just go with the 2.5 hour pseudo-epic. Sunshine's a little more streamlined than that... but it's still not free from the gravity of, let's call it "homage" to its sci-fi brethren, upon whose mighty shoulders it stands. One of my viewing companions compared it to 2001, only without all those smelly apes. And I suppose one could say that the crew looks like a Calvin Klein ad. Thankfully, Michelle Yeoh throws off the average age of the crew, and I guess Cillian does as well, to a lesser extent. I couldn't help but think of 2000's much-maligned Supernova, but clearly the stakes aren't as high here. And, of course, Solaris, but I fear that Sunshine's not in the same league. Also Silent Running with the plants. Lots of sci-fi movies beginning with S!
I hate to spoil any more details of the film, as I want the rest of you to suffer as I have suffered, but I did appreciate the cinematography of old, and by old I mean like Outland: big Panavision with lots of lens flares 'n stuff. As it turns out, there's only one cinematographer in the biz better than Stephen Goldblatt, and that's Peter "Spota" Hyams himself. Go figure. Or maybe it just saves on the budget. The one moment in Sunshine that I unequivocally liked, of course: when the girl says "We've got an outbreak of excessive manliness on the ship." And, being a Danny Boyle film, there's the occasional flash of deep, philosophical dialogue, mostly courtesy of the villain at the end. So, remember, kids: the more philosophical you are, the more crazy you are, too!
But I'm afraid I can't let go the plot holes of the basic science of this sci-fi film. According to the DVD jacket, the sun is dying in the year 2057, about 45 years from now. Apparently, the catastrophic environmental crises we face here on Earth are SO powerful, they've radiated back to the sun and caused the sun to start dying. Well, this was made during the Dubya administration, so all of Hollywood's products were a little more dour than, say, under the Clinton administration. But I still believe that the sun will last a bit longer than 2057. I've heard about 4.5 billion years longer. But I'm in favor of any expensive suicide mission into space. Superman IV happens to be on the table here next to me, and who knows? Maybe all the world's nuclear weapons in a giant net would cause the sun to fail, making the expedition of Sunshine necessary. Maybe we can all learn from the mistakes made by the crew in this film. GOTTA RUN!!

Good double bill with: Solaris, Supernova

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan