EggFellas

...sorry.  I've literally run out of headlines!  I need to go on a retreat or something.  Anyway, as David Letterman might quip, if he were a student of Looney Tunes, about Golden Yeggs he might say "Now there's your million dollar cartoon right there.  Straightforward, good vs. evil, slapstick..."  Of course, he was more of a Beavis and Butt-Head kinda guy.  Sure, Letterman interviewed Mel Blanc back in the day, but what did Mel ever do for him?  Damn little, if memory serves.
But if you are indeed a fan of complicated plots a la The Sixth Sense and what not, then Golden Yeggs is probably not for you.  In fact, there's probably damn few Looney Tunes with such a complex plot, but they find greatness in their own ways.  Now, sure, Golden Yeggs is kind of a variation on Friz's earlier Slick Hare.  There's the countdown, the threat of violence, the thrill of an impending deadline... but this time, it's not old softie Humphrey Bogart pulling the strings!

ACT ONE

But before we get into all that, here's a Moment of Zen for you: a pig feeding a bunch of chickens!  I have this one on my portable device, and I found myself going back eight seconds and watching this scene over and over again.  I was just mesmerized by it, hypnotized even.  Porky Pig saying "Here, chi, uh ch-chi uh chi-chick!"  Now, I've recorded the clucking of chickens myself, and Golden Yeggs does indeed have some of the real deal in it.  But then, here comes Mel Blanc playing the panicked chicken.  Terrific.  Way to break the spell, guys.
And so, we find out what all the fuss is about.  There's a golden egg in the henhouse.  Capitalist dreams suddenly fill Porky's eyes.  He's struck it rich, or so it would seem.  Now the investigation begins.  Which of his flock produced the egg?  You know, everyone always gives credit to Shrek for really skewering the Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes of old... and to a lesser extent, the Hoodwinked! series.  WHAT ABOUT LOONEY TUNES?!!!  What about Foney Fables?  Am I the only one on this coast who's seen it?  Surely there's one or two of the original animators in a home somewhere, muttering about how they didn't draw Bugs Bunny, they drew pictures of Bugs Bunny.  They believe there is a difference.

ACT TWO

Amid all the publicity... oh, right.  I forgot.  So, this new Hick Goose character, straight from an Art Davis Looney Tunes, is the one who actually laid the egg, but Hick Goose gives the credit to Daffy Duck, who's playing a regular black duck in this one.  All the chickens hail Daffy a hero, something Daffy's so not used to, but will gladly take credit for.  And so, a publicity campaign begins.  Newspaper headlines.  Cover of Life Magazine, no less!  Which, as it turns out, is read by the mob.  Mel Blanc's short mobster is reading the magazine, and says to his goons, "We're going into the poultry business."  Clearly this isn't the funny mobster of Bugs Bunny's The Unmentionables, but oh well.
I remember seeing the scene with Porky's bruised head as a lad, and not being able to internalize it all quickly enough.  Ah, the days before TiVo.  Porky's got a couple bucks in his hand for his troubles... a pig with hands that was feeding chickens.  The wonders never cease.  And so, a quick-cross fade later, and Daffy's being forced to lay golden eggs for the mob.
Of course, the mob aren't complete monsters.  After the initial round of holding a gun on Daffy, Daffy comes up with the idea that he needs a more pleasing setting in order to lay another golden egg.  And so, the mobsters move him to a place in sunny Beverly Hills, with a pool and everything.  Daffy's finally enjoying himself, floating there in the pool and sipping a drink.  But every paradise comes with a price, and soon the mobsters return, wanting that damn golden egg.  Daffy, lost in the moment, daydreaming of a bygone era, gives some half-assed reason why he can't be bothered with the filthy task at hand, and he goes right back to daydreaming.
Well, the mobsters soon take care of this indignity!  Nick, the tiny boss's big goon, fires a pool torpedo from his handgun and sinks Daffy's raft with a mighty screen-engulfing explosion.  Daffy uses the occasion to treat it like the sinking of the Lusitania.  Very odd, and if you're part of the ever-watchful Creepy Police, this might set off a few alarms in that direction.

ACT THREE

It's the final, absolute last straw for Daffy with the mobsters.  And so, the final deadline is handed down: a golden egg in five minutes, or else... it's a compressed five minutes, obviously.  More like about two and a half in terms of screen time, but you get the idea.  And so, like Daffy and Porky trying to escape the hotel in Porky Pig's Feat, Daffy tries various methods to escape the hotel he's been moved to.  I believe this also informed Stephen King's thinking when he came up with the first story of Cat's Eye... love that messed-up '80s movie.
...okay, I've done the necessary stats.  So, depending upon your point of view, the final ultimatum either starts at 4:11 with the initial proposal, or it starts when Mugsy Rocky leaves the room at 4:27 and the hotel door slams.  I'm assuming that the five minutes ends after Daffy bashes the noisy clock to bits, and the three gangsters reappear in the extra-wide doorway that accommodates them all, which happens at 6:00 in the proceedings.  Therefore, it's a five minutes that either lasts 1:49 or 1:33.  Ah, the power of cinema.
"No egg?" asks the diminutive Mafia head.  Daffy gulps and says "Uh uh!"  This is why Mel Blanc is so revered as a Thespian, you see.
And now, that thin line between violence cartoonish and all-too-real gets crossed.  But to be fair, Daffy only gets the top feathers on his head shot off.  Again, not the cute, cuddly mobsters of The Unmentionables who eventually get turned into, or stuck inside of, a couple of cereal boxes.  Thinking he has crossed over into the next life, Daffy's eyes glaze over and turn into a circle with a tiny dot in the center, and we hear a Clampett "Boink!" sound.  Daffy looks and... how about that?  A golden egg!  Daffy, in his usual happy go lucky style, says "Just goes to show you!  You don't know what you can do 'til you got a gun against your head!"  The NRA should really hold that aloft as a great reason for the existence of guns, let alone gun ownership in general.  Frankly, the whole argument about the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, well, sure, it's got a Zen-ish quality to it and all, and the whole cut and paste aspect to it, repeating the "guy with a gun" part, but even the best of quotes get stale after a while.  I go back to the college admissions guy who told a group of us that he's just so sick of that Gandhi qoute... quote about being the change in the world.  What about his suffering at his job?  I mean, what?

EPILOGUE

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  While Daffy's Takeaway (c) from this Teachable Moment (TM) is that it's all about the gun, for the rest of us the Aesop's fable lesson is probably "Never take credit for an egg you didn't lay, especially a golden one."  Particularly in the modern era, even when this cartoon was made, when thoughts turn more industrial than ever.  Now sure, Rube Goldberg himself probably never invented a machine that contained parts such as a psychotic mobster with a gun and a golden-egg-laying fowl, which is where the mob comes in.  It's all about the money, right?  And when Daffy sees that room full of empty egg cartons, and the mobster tells him to fill them up, Daffy's eyes turn to either crosses or plus signs when he faints, depending on your perspective.
And now that I've finally turned off even my most fervent readers, I might as well bring up one of Friz's compilation movies that contains extra footage, probably The Looney, Looney, Looney Bugs Bunny Movie... HAH! Nailed it.  They show Daffy filling up those boxes and getting shot in the head.  Eventually, paramedics come to take an exhausted, traumatized Daffy away.  Someone asks Daffy if they can get him anything.  Daffy simply says "Get me a proctologist!"  Oh, these affairs just aren't for kids.

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

Auteur Watch - Sania Dosunmu

You know, every once in a while you get a title like Dinner With the Devil.  Now it might turn people off, if only for some of the same reasons that a dinner with, say, Jesus would.  You can probably guess what the conversation's going to be about.  Where's the excitement?  The surprise?  But it's from 1975, so it harkens back to an era of big wigs and platform shoes with goldfish in them.  A simpler era, and dinner was a bigger deal.  In France, it might have been a big lunch with the Devil, with a nice wine.  I was reminded of the old Bobcat Goldthwait punchline about wanting dinner and drinks first.  I guess the Devil might still do that.  I imagine he'd do that with someone like Ted Cruz, after the ink on the parchment's dry.  But whatever the case, Sania seems to have lost their taste for directing, so to speak, after just the one film.  Must've been a bad experience.  Couldn't handle the pressure of a big time film like that, had to quit the biz forever, you know the old story.

Mortals of Tinseltown

So, the big debut this week is something called Gods of Egypt at #2.  I'm happy it did well and all, but it's kinda too slick for me or something.  It's a slick, green-screen surface that I just can't cling to at all.  But it gives Bill Maher a chance to complain again about Gerard Butler movies anew.  And it's a renewal of faith for Gods of Egypt director Alex Proyas.  I'm surprised he has a career at all, seeing as how he killed the son of Bruce Lee... I know, I know, we're not supposed to talk about that.  Same thing with this guy and Gone Fishin'.  So a crew member got killed!  So what?  Think long term here, people!  Gone Fishin' is a memorable classic that we watch every year at Thanksgiving and Halloween!  Isn't that what's important here?
At #5, it's Eddie the Eagle.  Not as hard of a sell as Cool Runnings, but at least Cool Runnings was a bit of a hit.  And at #6, it's the gritty crime drama Triple 9... noticed I didn't use the word 'urban'?  ...Damn it!  It's more David Ayer-esque fare, but from a different director of music videos gone legit.  His name is the vaguely familiar John Hillcoat.  He looks like the lead singer from the band Midnight Oil, and he's finally got his day in the sun, just like Anton Corbijn and that George Clooney movie he did a few years ago... man, how time flies.

Next Looney Tunes: Non-Sexual "Boobs in the Woods"

Our next Looney Tunes, called... hoh boy... Boobs in the Woods, well, it's kinda lame, but I still kinda like it.  It's not a Clampett or a Jones, and doesn't have any terribly classic gags in it... which makes it a perfect McKimson.  Arguably, this 1950 Looney Tunes is a lot like 1942's My Favorite Duck, only without the inherent dramatic tension of "No Duck Hunting" signs, but this is addressed when an irritated Porky gets out the shotgun and threatens to use it on Daffy.
Just before Daffy became the "greedy coward" of Ducking the Devil fame, and Bugs' eternal foil of the hunting trilogy and of other fare such as A Star is Bored, Daffy was lunacy incarnate on the silver screen.  He's mellowed somewhat here but he tries to keep the spirit of St. Loony Up the Cream Bun and Jam alive.  He's got those dead eyes again!  Creepy.  And yet, Arthur Davis' fingerprints are otherwise not on this one.  Anyway, Daffy gives us an opening song, then disappears underwater, with a sign saying "See You Later!" floating up in his wake.

ACT ONE

As much as this can be broken up into acts, Act One consists of Porky's introduction.  The great American road trip has certainly evolved over the years, but it had special significance in the '50s, what with paved roads finally being perfected and all.  Leave the drag racing to the kids in the big cities, I say.  Well, Porky's got no kids to pile in the car to take with him, but he certainly needs to get away from the big city for a while, if only to avoid being turned into semi-organic bacon.  His hobby on this trip?  Painting.  We start with a nice subtle visual gag with Porky's painting.  The animators must have gotten a kick out of this one, unlike how the Korean animators who work on The Simpsons don't like the way they're portrayed.  Not one iota.  Daffy interferes with Porky's artistic creation, to put it mildly, to the point where Porky pulls a shotgun on Daffy.  Well, he's still calmer than Julian Schnabel.  No whooshing sound upon Porky's loaded return!  I'm disappointed.  Daffy uses his gift for characters and improvisation to work his way out of getting shot by Porky, and we plunge headlong into politically incorrect territory when Daffy puts on a Pocahontas outfit.  Daffy ends up in a one-man... I'm sorry, I mean a one-duck powwow.  Hard to say what's worse: Daffy's capering, or Porky's reaction to it - Porky smites Daffy to the ground, saying "Ah, shut up!"  For the moment, I think Porky's much worse.

ACT TWO

Porky decides that, since Daffy's messing with his painting too much, it's time to try some fishing.  But this is the 1950s and Porky is one of the early multi-taskers, apparently, so the fishing will be done as automatically as possible.  Porky rigs up a fishing line to a bell close to the edge of the lake.  We'll leave that aside as a viable fishing method for now.  Daffy, hiding behind the rock, waits for Porky to get far enough away, and ... yup, he rings the bell.  As I said earlier, this cartoon has its rewards, and Porky running to see the size of the fish he's apparently caught, tripping on every last thing in his path as he goes, is probably one of the best gags in this thing.  You've had a day like that.  We all have.
Now, after this first incident, Porky says "Gosh!  It must've gotten off the hook," with the usual stutter in there someplace.  Porky walks away, Stage Right.  Daffy quickly reemerges from behind the rock... and Porky LOOKS BACK AT HIM!!  Okay, Porky doesn't turn his head, but his eyes look back!

LOOK UPON IT!!!  ...boy!  I usually never use a 2nd image like that.  And so, it's like George W. Bush once said... something about shame on you for fooling him once and... something else.  Needles to say, Porky falls for the gag a second time, but he's not going to be made a sucker a third time.  Pounding his little pork fist into his hand, Porky walks slowly away Stage Right, and Daffy goes for the bell a third time.  Boy!  He's really working that bell good now!  But even Daffy's got a sense of shame in certain circumstances, and he turns white as a sheet when he finds Porky waiting for him behind the rock.  So much so that he sounds like the Nazi hotel manager from Porky Pig's Feat when he falls down the endless spiral staircase.
Porky's getting ready to chop off Daffy's head with an axe this time.  And then... the second stroke of genius.  Daffy's got a bell in his hand and rings it, thereby saving his skin and his head.  Porky goes over to check the line.  To Daffy's surprise, a very very large fish is on the hook.  Dayamn!  That fish is taller than Porky!

ACT THREE

Now, technically, the Third Act should start when Daffy destroys Porky's car engine, but I think this juncture might ultimately be a little more apt.  "Have you got a FISHING license?" Daffy asks Porky. Porky produces the license.  Daffy asks for a dog license.  Porky produces one.  Daffy's next request is a tricky one, but Porky happily obliges, Porky's previous grievances with Daffy apparently all but forgotten.  Daffy quickly fixes that with his next line of inquiry: marriage license.  Daffy's eventual response is another stroke of genius, IMHO.  Porky's snapped out of his spell and gets angry anew at Daffy.  Daffy messes with Porky a little more, but frankly, Porky had it coming.  Porky chucks a rock at Daffy.  Can you believe that?  Daffy turns it into a game of baseball.  Daffy messes with Porky, but only until Porky ends up in a giant puddle of mud.

EPILOGUE

Porky finally decides to cut his vacation short, saying "I'm gonna get out of here before I'm as nutty as that duck!"  The angrier he is, the less he stutters. 
As with the rest of the cartoon, Daffy's antics are in response to what Porky's doing.  Porky's preparing to leave, so naturally Daffy has to leap into the car's engine and rip it out piecemeal!  Much like Bluto in The Spinach Roadster, but Daffy's got far loonier plans in mind.  Porky just misses seeing Daffy destroying his car's engine, and he didn't look around on the ground to see the various parts strewn about.  You think that wouldn't be hard to miss!  Oh well.  That's Porky for ya, stubborn as a mule.
Porky tries to start his car.  Daffy mimics the engine noise, thereby creating "Speed Buggy."  Porky gets out of the car and walks over to the engine, and Daffy starts making the engine noise again, thereby startling Porky.  Same thing happened in Case of the Missing Hare.  I knew I'd remember it!  The magician puts swords into a box and Bugs makes pain noises.  However, Bugs' timing was off on the third sword, and the magician got wise to Bugs.  Never try to fool a magician, even one as clunky as the one in Case of the Missing Hare.
Porky looks inside his car's engine to find Daffy in there, messing about.  Ah, Daffy the Method Actor.  Even the director couldn't make him stop.  Porky jumps inside the car's engine and does some tinkering of his own, and the result is strangely perverse!  Porky has engineered a duck-powered car, and the choke lever on the car's console causes Daffy to actually get choked.  I guess you could call this a variation on getting your face stuck in a goofy position.  You know, that old saw about getting slapped on the back when you're making a face?  It worked in One Crazy Summer, if memory serves...  please don't make me watch that again.  Alas, Savage Steve Holland and John Cusack weren't destined to ever work together again.  Same with Demi Moore and Lara Flynn Boyle.
Anyway, as you can see from the first attached pic (that you don't have to move to your inbox to see, by the way), Porky's got the proper permit to do that to Daffy.  Frankly, I can hardly blame Porky, but I still sort of don't feel right about it.  So while the cartoon with the non-future-proof title Boobs in the Woods isn't the best Looney Tunes ever, it certainly isn't the worst.  I still think that that dubious honour goes to Catch as Cats Can.

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

Auteur Watch - Andrew Dosunmu

Yes, the sun and the moon shine down on the lucky few sometimes and bless them with talents beyond the average... and Andrew actually got some reviews!  When a poster's got one of those things in white with the leaves around it?  That means prestige.  That means film festivals.  Usually big city film festivals, although those things are getting usurped now a teeny bit.  I think Seth Meyers used them in this bit about Boston films, for one. 
But even the jaded sophisticates over at The Village Voice acknowledge that a film can be predictable and still have a big emotional impact.  Let's face it!  There are finite plots, but far more variety when it comes to the ethnicities of the peoples involved.

bo 2-21-16

America, Hail, Caesar! has already slipped to #10.  That makes me sad.

Without a Clue

Welp, that horrible time in an amateur film critic's life has come once again where they get a regular job, and they can't devote the kind of quality time they used to to the more fun things in life.  I've got a non-film criticism based job, and it's a tough one.  Probably just as well, because I can tell you right up front that Deduce, You Say is a wonderful satire of Sherlock Holmes...
...and yet, there's something about it.  Something very very non-Looney Tunes.  First of all, it's terribly British.  However, Daffy's kinda like Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves... know what I mean?  Not so strong with the accent.  Porky and everyone else, on the other hand... dayamn!  I've never felt so alone in the world!  Second, the plot structure's so much like a Sherlock Holmes story that the Looney Tunes-ness that this affair is supposed to have gets lost in the shuffle.  But that's Chuck Jones for ya.  Always with the inferiority complex, always trying to show people that these little cartoons for the tiddly winkies are so much more.
But I suppose that that's one of the secret joys of this affair.  It's not like Harry Potter where it's a mystery for a child to solve.  It's just a very, very, very simple "case" that needs solving.  It's more of a self-solving case, if you will.  If anything, Daffy's slowing everybody down, needlessly padding out the length of the cartoon to six or seven minutes.  And it does question the very notion of Sherlock Holmes to begin with.  Talk about the ultimate lack in social graces!  "The bread crumbs on your lapel suggest that you're a raging foodie, and you stop off at the pub before heading home after a hard day's work in the coal mines.  Your hands, however, suggest that you've never performed a day's work in your life," he might say.  Not to mention the whole arms race, where criminals try to out-clever the police, the police in turn trying to out-clever the crooks and their superior officers.  But I am reminded of a time when Uncle Miltie used the line "Elementary, my dear Watson" in a similar grade-school-ish context... damn.  They don't have it.  But they've got a nice sketch he did with Basil Rathbone!  I gotta go........

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Dennis Dortch

Just goes to show you.  Never underestimate the power of a positive review from Variety!  Never misunderestimate that.  I mean, look at all this subsequent TV work!  LOOK AT IT!!!  I haven't heard of a single one of the shows, but they must be good!  Multiple episodes and what not.

Crappy Valentine's Day

And why is it crappy?  It just is, that's why.  First of all, Hail, Caesar! isn't doing all that great at the box office... but maybe it's already recouped its losses.  22 million?  That's, like, twice the budget of Inside Llewyn Davis!  Boy, they know how to stretch their dollars.  Probably spent that much on TV ads.
So Hail, Caesar! is down... but Deadpool is up.  $132 million is quite a haul for a Kick-Ass-esque thing by Marvel.  After this, they really can do it all.  And I'm pretty sure Ryan Reynolds could use a hit right now.  Kinda like Jennifer Aniston in Office Space.  She'll always be grateful for the cult status of that film, her publicist informs me, even though she wasn't the star.  Typical male-dominated Hollywood.
...or is it?  Check out How to Be Single at #3 with the four female leads... did I just mistype it as "femail"?  Phigures.  It's the new Steel Magnolias, folks.  Spring Breakers, "Girls" on HBO, this... in the Battle of the Sexes, both sides seem to be losing somehow.  Oh, Rebel Wilson's fun and all, but she has yet to carry a movie by herself like Melissa McCarthy can.  And Leslie Mann's just trying to break hubby Judd Apatow's heart, isn't she?
And speaking of Apatow, Apatow's buddy Ben Stiller put his heart and soul and about three months of principal photography into Zoolander 2, only to have it debut at #4.  I'd feel more sorry for him, but he really needs to let go of getting his sketch show on Fox canceled.  I mean, if "The Ben Stiller Show" doesn't get canceled, where's Ben's big-ass movie career?  Where's Bob Odenkirk on "Breaking Bad"?  Where's Andy Dick being a trainwreck?  See what I mean?  What a crappy Valentine's Day.... oh, and Antonin Scalia died.  Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family of that huge right-wing piece of crap, of course.  Seriously though, he was pretty awful.  And just like Reagan should have had a third term, now the Republicans don't want to fill Scalia's vacant seat.  They want to fill it in with concrete, just like Boo Radley's hole in the tree in "To Kill a Mockingbird."  Yeah, obeying laws is hard, isn't it, Republicans?  FILL THE DAMN SEAT!  LET OBAMA FILL THE DAYAMN SEAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Searching for Goldie Potter, or The Brotherhood of the Self-Travelling Pants

More weirdness from Chuck Jones.  Here's an obscure Porky Pig cartoon called Wearing of the Grin, which is probably a pun.  I'm probably not Irish enough to fully appreciate this one.  I've only got a sliver of Irish heritage in my DNA, and probably not enough to justify a family castle.  But you know it's a good cartoon if it's got both a music-only track and a DVD link to a mini-documentary.
Anyway, much like Water, Water Every Hare, a Warner Bros. cartoon character finds themselves at an old abandoned mansion... at least, it seems to be abandoned.  In this case, it's Conde Nast extraordinaire Porky Pig traveling in Ireland, a fitting symbol for American Imperialism if there ever was one.  Especially so, since Porky just goes ahead and lets himself in the place!  Okay, he did use the doorbell, and the place was unlocked... what knockers!  And so, Porky calls out to see if anyone's home, kinda like Scatman Crothers in The Shining.  Porky's salutation rings out through the large empty mansion, of course... more Imperialism.  I think Mel just said the line over and over with a little bit of echo to it, and truncating it ever so slightly with each iteration; easier that way.  Pre-digital, you know!
And so, the chief Leprechaun, as we come to find out later, makes his first appearance.  He tries to explain to Porky that the castle is abandoned except for Leprechauns, as the sign outside tried to explain.  Porky treats the guy worse than the help!  Oh Dude... Porky slams the castle door, and a giant mace falls on Porky's head.  Now Porky may look like he's dead, but screenwriters take note, as you will have to re-watch this one from this point.  Sorry... spoiler alert.
We come to find out that the Leprechaun is in fact a double decker, as there's a brunette Leprechaun doubling as Seamus / O'Pat's legs.  The brunette Leprechaun gets paranoid, thinking Porky's after their pot of gold.  No wonder this guy's the legs.  Cooler heads must prevail. 
...meh, I can't get into this one.  Sure, there's the big moment when Porky freaks out, and the HLIC (Head Leprechaun in Charge) says to him "Pretty weird, huh?  You not be believin' what's afore ye little pig eyes now, are ya?"  ...something like that.  Then there's a big trial, and Porky's got to put on these Green Shoes, turning him into the Looney Tunes equivalent of ... Michael Flatley?  Kinda can't believe I remembered that!  I only looked it up two days ago!  At first, Porky doesn't think much of the court's punishment... until it takes him on a semi-psychedelic yet harried journey across a Dali-esque landscape. 
And then... SPOILER ALERT: it all turns out to be a dream!  A fever dream, brought upon by the nearly fatal blow to the head from the giant mace.  Porky decides to seek lodging elsewhere, American Imperialism is averted, and the two Leprechauns shake hands, the one from his post in the pants.  Mission accomplished.  Again, I'm not Irish enough to really appreciate this one.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Michael Dorn

...Worf?  Seriously?  Boy, everyone really does want to direct!  Seriously, though, I can imagine being in his shoes, with the television directors he must've suffered through.  Peter Bonerz, Howard Storm and Rod Daniel, what have you.  One can't help but look at them and think "Aw, hell, I could do better than that!"  But Worf's directorial ambitions are clearly less than Riker's.  At least Riker got a few things up on the silver screen.  Of course, it's an unspoken taboo of Hollywood that Klingons have been traditionally kept out of the silver screen director's chair, no matter how long they've worked with the Enterprise in good faith.
As with other stars of Star Trek, they tend to stick to directing Star Trek stuff.  Shatner, Frakes, what have you.  Well, Riker does plenty of other stuff.  He's got a slightly broader range than Shatner, and yet, less mass appeal.  Who'd you rather have a beer with?  I don't know the "Star Trek" equivalent of 20th century Earth beer, sorry.  And so, Dorn's done a couple Star Trek episodes and... "V.I.P." ?!!!  Love that show.  I guess Pamela Anderson's too goofy-looking now to get her own show again.  Dorn also wrote and directed "Through the Fire," a thinly veiled autobiography for the TV market.  I guess none of the critics covered him when he ran.  Oh well.  But he did give a significant part to someone named Ron Dorn.  What a good brother slash parent!  Hey, there are no small parts, and New York doormen are the secret keepers of the city and its secrets.  Take the creepy door guy in that one episode of "Seinfeld"!

...figures

Well, Universal did just about everything they could: wall-to-wall adverts on the TV, releasing the film in a relatively uncrowded weekend... maybe that's it.  Maybe everyone's gone to the Super Bowl already.  But they decided to dump their kids off at the more reliable Kung Fu Panda 3 instead.  No, no one wants to take what they perceive to be the broccoli / medicine equivalent of the cinema, and they can tell, too.  I mean, everyone loves the Hemsworth twins but they somehow knew to stay away from Rush, for one.
But now that everyone's a semi-professional videographer these days, maybe it's not so bad to reflect on the way images used to be manufactured and distributed... but I'm getting into my review a little bit here.  Time to just focus on the horse race aspect.  Alas, the people spoke, and they decided they'd wait to just get the Blu-Ray of the Coen's seventeenth directorial effort, Hail, Caesar!  I just may have to sign up for IMDb Pro to find out what all they've got in the pipeline... oh, right.  For one, there's Suburbicon that Clooney's going to direct.  Maude Lebowski's returned to the fold, so to speak!
We've got two other debuts that Panda 3 wasn't able to deny entrance in the Top 10 this week.  At #5, it's Nicholas Sparks' latest... At #6, the oversaturation of zombies in the movie marketplace... actually, movies, TV, and novels, it's the latest example of the present chewing up and spitting out the past.  First, we had Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  Now we've got Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Or, if you want the prestige of the plus sign, Pride + Prejudice + Zombies.  You know, like Flesh + Blood and Romeo + Juliet.  I really just don't get it.  I guess it's like how those who failed at spelling bees grew up to become titans of the business world developing phrases like "Tumblr" and "Artic Blue."  Now the trend is to warp the minds of all Comp. Lit. teachers everywhere.  Soon we shall be completely flooded with books like "Alexander Fleming vs. Ebola" or "Harriet Tubman: Hip Hop Star."  It's kinda fascinating to watch.

Hail the Coen-quering Heroes

In 2003, during the short media blitz for the much hated Intolerable Cruelty, the Coen brothers, George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones all appeared on an episode of The Charlie Rose Show... why, it might be on the internet someplace!  Meh... someone else can look for it.  Anyway, at one point, Charlie asked about a project in development called Hail, Caesar!, and I don't think they were talking about the 1994 buddy pic starring Anthony Michael Hall and... someone else... Samuel L. Jackson?  Wow.  Bet even he doesn't remember that one.  Ethan said, incredulously, "How'd you hear about that?"  And Charlie responded, "I told you!  I'm a fan!"  Well, it's 13 years later, and it is finally out.  One last celluloid-only holdout in the new digital era.  Clearly the Coens are a fan of Jason Mann's work ethic.
Now, as you might be aware, when it comes to film criticism and the Coens, I'm the critical equivalent of the old woman from The Tenant who micturates on everyone's rug except for Roman Polanski.  So what did I think of it?  Well, I'm a creature of habits, fortunately or unfortunately, and I kept thinking "Where's the Closed Captioning?  Where's the remote?  Can I rewind this one part... oh, right."
Now, most Coen films are unusual, and Hail, Caesar! discovers new ways of unusual-ness.  For one thing, Coen films usually take place over the course of a week or two, but apparently this one takes place during one action-packed day.  Fitting for the subject material, I suppose.  Secondly, they've never made a film like, say, And Now for Something Completely Different or Shorts, a film with a series of very loosely connected sketches.  Hail, Caesar! is a little like that, but everything turns out to have a purpose; more like Short Cuts, I suppose, but PG-13.  However, the Coens push the PG-13 rating a bit, even if it seems only slightly, especially in the Internet Age.
Also, Coen films usually only make use of footage in the film for the trailers.  In that respect, the instant case is more like a regular Hollywood film.  Where's the long shot of the blue van?  Where's Clooney rubbing his teeth?  Where's... WHERE'S CLOONEY?!  He's only in it for, like, FIVE MINUTES!  Sorry, spoiler alert.  There better be a lot of extras on the Blu-Ray, I'm just saying. 
Now for those of you out there thinking the Coens have gotten all soft and complacent... the Farrellys, for example... well, perhaps that's true, but I'll give it til the third or fourth viewing of the instant case to figure that out.  I'm no expert, in the final analysis.  But it all seems a little familiar, sure, as filmmakers tend to make the same kinds of films.  Joel and Ethan are no exception to that rule.  They're all here.  All the usual Coen collaborators, all the usual Coen themes: a kidnapping, a character saying "The point is," the excruciating period detail, the excruciating detail in general ("Head Shots to be Filmed Later"... love it!!!), the "whoosh" sound when a door opens, their trademark motorcycle noise (during the "No Dames!" dance sequence, spoiler alert)... all the things we love about their movies.  Oh, and Capitol Pictures was also the name of the studio in Barton Fink, but alas, Colonel Lipnick has since moved on.  Studio fixer Eddie Mannix answers to Joseph Schenck in New York for the day-to-day studio operations... I mean, Nick Schenck.  I didn't know he had a brother!
But surely, The Movie Hooligan, there was something about the film you didn't like?  What's nagging at me?  Well, I feel sort of let down on behalf of Fred Melamed, even though he says he had a good time on the movie.  Fred here has a role more like the ones he usually has in a Woody Allen movie: far too small of a part.  But whaddayagonnado?  He plays one of the... no, I won't spoil the surprise.  I guess one of the lines that will stick out for the academics among you out there will be "This is about economics, not money."  There's probably one or two right-wing economists out there who would vehemently disagree.  The Coens borrowed Robert Picardo from Joe Dante to give him a small part as a rabbi.  I was trying to think who he sounded like, and then it hit me!  Martin Landau!  Epic.  It's definitely the largest cast they've ever worked with, and for the budget fetishists out there like me, it's probably the most expensive, second only to the much maligned Intolerable Cruelty.  Well, I guess one of their films has to be the worst.
Okay, here's a nitpick.  Now, I love Tilda Swinton to death, don't get me wrong.  She's a sweetie pie.  But she plays dual roles here.  Before the IMDb entry got updated, she was listed as playing "Hedda Hopper."  Now the IMDb's been corrected, as it turns out she plays twin gossip columnist sisters, possibly based on Hedda Hopper, or maybe Dear Abby, who knows.  As with the Paul Dano character in There Will Be Blood, one is more savvy than the other.  However, as good as Tilda is, the differentiation between the characters could've been a little, tiny bit stronger.  Maybe if one was a blond and the other a redhead?  That kind of thing.  I thought the Coens were obsessed with hair!  Sloppy work, guys.
I'm probably forgetting some nuance that the New York Times reporter picked up on... and I'm sure I missed most of the references.  But I did get that the director of the action Western was probably John Ford, that Scarlett Johannson was Esther Williams, and Veronica Osorio was supposed to be Carmen Miranda... although, given when the film was supposed to be taking place, she was probably well past dating age.  Just saying.  Plus, people lived harder back then.  If you made it to 50, you must've had a deal with the Devil... ooh!  I just thought of something I noticed.  One of the Communists looked EGG-ZACTLY like Llewyn Davis.  I believe it was this guy.  Oscar Isaac's moved on to extremely high-profile projects now.  I mean, he's Apocalypse, for Stan Lee's sake!
I believe it was the Onion reviewer that compared Hail, Caesar! to Steven Spielberg's 1941.  Except that (spoiler alert) the first scene in 1941 is one of the last in Hail, Caesar!, and that 1941 is a little bit tone-deaf, and its characters are perhaps a bit too broad, but both films certainly look expensive and there's a lot in them to love.  Hail, Caesar! has a lot of explosions in it, too, but they're more internal than external.  Oh!  And here's the biggest difference of them all: 1941 is in my DVD collection, but Hail, Caesar! isn't!  I can't wait three months!!!  A toast to those crazy Sun worshippers Joel and Ethan Coen!

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Short Reviews - February 2016

The Boss - I am now officially sick of that computer-assisted special effect where someone gets violently thrown either against a wall or some other short distance.  We get it!  We've seen the Messin' with Sasquatch commercials!

Brain on Fire - Unofficial sequel to Man on Fire

Crossroads - They never show this on cable!  How bad can it be? 

Eddie the Eagle - Marv produces a PG-13 pic?  Never thought I'd see the day!

The Eiger Sanction - Clint Eastwood thought he was making The Day of the Jackal, but it's more like A View to a Kill.

Friends of God: A Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi - During his police interrogation, former pastor Ted Haggard gave a short sermon and ended it with "Can I get a gay men?"

Hail, Caesar! - See?  Now this is how you cross-promote!  Did you see the ads for Channing Tatum on an all-new episode of something called "Idiotsitter"?  Genius.

Hannibal - ...that's it!  That's why Ben Carson acts so weird!  He must've had the top of his head taken off like Ray Liotta!

Identity Thief - Man, what it must take to piss off a screenwriter... hmm!  The Ted Cruz story.  Might be a good project, Craig!

Independence Day: Resurgence - Wait a minute... Whitmore's still president?  I guess the 22nd Amendment might seem a little frivolous after such ... hoh boy... after an alien attack of global proportions, noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style.  Hah!  I did it!  I described something without using the word 'epic.'  DAMN IT.......

Inside Llewyn Davis - I just noticed that this was nominated for a Saturn Award... by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films.  Um... should I tell them?

IP Man 3 - Does Tyson even remember doing this?

The Jerk Theory - A kid decides he's going to get the girl by acting like a jerk.  Nice theory and all, but this is a movie we're talking about.  Movies that are jerks just get shunned.  Take the Transformers movies, for example.  Or how about the Atlas Shrugged saga?  Now see, if I was really good, I'd post the question to my reader, Newsweek style: if movies were like people, which movies are jerks?

"Jiggery Pokery"  - ...oh!  That's where Scalia got that from!

The Jungle Book - ...I THOUGHT that was Bill Murray!!

The King of Comedy - You know... everyone talks these days about the various "hacks" that people should know.  What about Shelley?

LBJ - I always thought this would be a great Oliver Stone pic with Steven Seagal in the lead... oh well.

Now You See Me 2 - With an older, wiser Harold Potter... now that's casting magic!

Jiminy Glick in La La Wood - According to my ultra-reliable inside-the-beltway source, David Lynch was so moved by Martin Short's portrayal of him that Lynch is going to shoot some extra scenes for the Blu-Ray release of The Elephant Man in which Dr. Treves is riding in a horse-drawn carriage at night, just going along that one-lane dirt road with naught but the finest state of the art lantern of the time illuminating the path, so it seems as though the road is stabbing the night like some kind of sinister scalpel... you get the idea

Money Monster - Yeah, I used to love Sesame Street

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising - Well, the trailer certainly had something.  You think it's going to be a movie about Chloë Grace Moritz's character, and then the cast of Neighbors 1 shows up.  Will it hold up?  Will Moritz lose half her audience with the live-action The Little Mermaid?

The Nice Guys - Well, Russell Crowe's not going to be happy about finishing last; that much I know.

Old Fink - ...sorry, I just wanted to keep this link.  Somehow I get the feeling that that's not going to be the title, but what do I know?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Why, Jane Austen must be spinning in her grave.  Too bad her corpse can't rise from the dead and eat some Hollywood brains

Search and Destroy - Dayamn, but this David Salle pissed off the wrong people...

Sing Street - Ah, the triumph of getting the girl.  I know I'm just a jaded sophisticate, but isn't this just The Commitments but with an '80s soundtrack and without the better storyline?

Tanya's Island - Oh, this is going to simply be impossible to find now...

Triple 9 - Not an Oren Moverman pic

"Vinyl" (pilot) - Now, I hate Andrew "Dice" Clay as much as the next guy... just kidding, Silverstein.  Seriously though, man, but was that scene violent.

When the Game Stands Tall - I was originally going to devote this space to lament the observation that we seem to be running out of movie titles.  But on a more upbeat note, surely someone has compiled a list of movie titles with five words?

Where the Day Takes You - ...yeah!  Like that! ...EGAD!  A treasure trove!

Lord in Heaven Save Us, The WB Cartoons of Arthur Davis: Porky Would... if he Could

Time to get the long knives out.  I've been dreading this day for a long time now, but I didn't properly prepare myself for when exactly it was going to come.
"Directed by Arthur Davis."  Sheesh.  Are there any four scarier words to a fan of the Warner Brothers cartoons?  Okay, I'll be a little magnanimous, if you will.  Davis' IMDb bio damns him with faint praise.  Some of the stuff he did for Friz is some of his best work: Pink Panther, Ant and Aardvark... I hope to get to them someday.  "He did manage to direct one of the funniest Bugs Bunny cartoons, Bowery Bugs."  It's got one of the best punchlines, where Bugs ... SPOILER ALERT ... manages to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to some sucker hick... you know what, I'm going to double-check that assertion for myself right now.  How about that?
(seven minutes later...) ...okay, it's pretty good, but I don't think it's, say, The Wild Hare good.  Just what is my favourite Bugs cartoon, anyway?  Probably something by Clampett, like Wabbit Twouble or The Old Grey Hare, perhaps the penultimate Bugs cartoon.  Even the opening note of the musical score of Old Grey Hare is funny.  I love a good "blatty" tuba.  Bowery Bugs has some good throwaway gags in it, but... and that's another thing!  Davis worked with the best.  Frank Tashlin, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng... WHERE DID HE GO WRONG?  DID HE LEARN NOTHING?  NOTHING AT ALL????!!!!!!!
From what little I know of Davis, he seemed to favor Daffy Duck, with such cartoons as What Makes Daffy Duck.  But he mostly tried to be a trailblazer at Warner Bros. as a director.  He may have created the WB version of Disney's Chip and Dale, but somehow they were better under Friz's direction.  Davis liked to make cartoons without the usual stable of stars.  I guess you'd technically call them "one-offs," cartoons with all the leftover gags that didn't work with any of the well-established stars as Bugs and Elmer, etc.  Unfortunately, his WB cartoons seem to be on the level of Adam Sandler's stuff: your basic underdog nerd vs. the jock; take Bone Sweet Bone, for example.  Seriously, take it away, please.  I understand that Warner Bros. is planning to do a tribute to Arthur Davis when it gets to Volume 83, Disc 4 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, so I guess we'll just have to wait.
Anyway, no more introduction.  Let's get right to the first of what will hopefully be many many Arthur Davis Warner Brothers cartoons, and this one is called Porky Chops.  Ar ar ar... get it?

ACT ONE
That's right... I'm going back to the Three Act structure for this one.  Scene: a logged forest.  As you can see from the attached picture... see that?  I didn't even ask you to move this from your Spam folder.  Wasn't that nice of me? ... we've got a bunch of stumps.  We've also got a hollow log, a teeny sapling, and one last tall tree standing.  Spoiler alert: each has a role to play here.  Sorry if I ruined the surprise.  Go and watch it first already!... sorry, it's gonna cost you $1.99... you know, I'm almost tempted to do that just to see how many hits it's gotten.  Anyway, we zoom in on the last tree standing, and we're invited inside.  As I was saying before about Davis and his resistance to using established WB characters, here's a prime example.  As GrouchoFan notes, enter the vaguely Bugs Bunny-esque squirrel.  Some online have referred to this character as a "hipster squirrel."  I dragged out the DVD and watched this one on the TV, and one of my living companions thought it was Screwy Squirrel at first.  If only.  No, there's some historical precedent here.  Davis was born in Yonkers, so obviously this squirrel character is an homage to SOMETHING... one of the Bowery Boys?  Aren't they called that?  I hate to sound like a spineless, vanilla studio executive, but de-ethnicize this character a little bit!  Okay, okay, perhaps that's going a little too far.  There's local Brooklyn flavor there, obviously.  It's the big city fish out of water.  It's like the opposite of the country mouse going to the city type of deal, except there's no cousin to bounce off of.  And how this character's able to pick such a terrible spot to find rest and relaxation is beyond me.  But again, it's a child's cartoon.  These things aren't supposed to make sense, right?

Now, here's my next nitpick about Arthur Davis cartoons.  There's something about his character's eyes that doesn't quite connect.  I don't know what it is.  Maybe it's their shape, maybe it's that he seems to make sure the irises are always dead center, with plenty of white space around them to make sure they don't touch the edges.  Somehow, these artists who drew the characters were able to do a lot with eyes.  In general, except for Arthur Davis.  Maybe someone else can explain it to me.  Anyway, we get a longer-than-usual introduction, probably because this is a new character to the WB stable.  I don't know if he came back to do a second WB cartoon, but whatever.  No sooner does this character get to sleep in his bed in his purple pajamas, when trouble comes a'knockin'.  The lumberjack has returned to do away with the last tree of this new-fangled forest.  The big-city traveler is rightly indignant, of course.  Doesn't the lumber jack in question understand?  Don't cartoon lumberjacks ever learn?  They're the bad guy!  It's a long, deep tradition, from Bluto in Axe me Another to Popeye in Wood-Peckin'.  And it is in that tradition that this non-native of the forest goes to ground level and teaches this usurper a thing or two about messin' with Sasquatch... I mean, Mother Nature.  As in Wood-Peckin', it begins with a subtle attack on... oh, by the way, Porky Pig is the lumberjack in question.  I would've thought Elmer Fudd, but what do I know about comedy?  Anyway, as in Wood-Peckin', the lumberjack never knew what hit them.  The... I guess I'll just call him the 'Hipster Squirrel' for the sake of consistency... the Hipster Squirrel sabotages Porky's axe, thereby causing Porky much physical anguish, so much so that Porky decides that the only solution is to get a fresh axe.  A whole "flock" of axes!  Well, that's Porky for ya.  Ever the individualist.  Daffy would get some hired goons to help.
At this point, Porky has wandered off, still unawares of who was responsible for the adze-based mischief.  Having heard Porky's future plans for the tree, Hipster Squirrel does an impression of Porky.  Somehow it's not as effective as the similar scene from Wabbit Twouble, but I guess I'm just picking more nits again.  To be fair, that Hipster Squirrel does a hell of an impression of Porky!  Quick learner, I guess.
Needles to say, Hipster Squirrel's vacation dwelling is in imminent danger of being vertical, and on the ground.  And Hipster Squirrel is nothing if not prepared to defend his vacation home, and he knows he needs some serious hardware to stave off that impending onslaught from the flock of axes.  "This calls for stra-tee-gee!" he says, standing at Hipster attention.  And so, in a New York minute, Hipster Squirrel returns from the Acme superstore with a kevlar steel sheet to protect the typical chopping area on his tree, then painting over it to look like the tree's natural bark... dayamn!  Now, that's some Greenpeace, Earth First! eco-terrorist-type sh... stuff.  See, this is another example of the tone deafness that is Arthur Davis.  In his quest to distinguish himself from the other WB Looney Tunes directing greats, he falls on the wrong side of the spectrum, into Creepy Ville, where more and more things reside each day thanks to the internet, I think.

ACT TWO

As good a time as any for Act Two... maybe a little early.  And so, Porky returns with his golf club bag full of axes, lol.  Porky's singing the song that Daffy was singing in Daffy Doodles when Daffy was trying to figure out how to outfox Officer Porky's moustache booby trap.  And so, Porky gets back to the tree, takes the first axe and... yup, Hipster Squirrel's plan worked.  The axe is destroyed, and Earth First! changes their mind about tree spiking... well, the first part, anyway.  In rapid succession, Porky destroys the other axes almost as quickly, making the sound of the falling steel railroad tracks in The Unruly Hare, only slightly slower.
As you can see, Hipster Squirrel takes great delight in the fact that he's handing the axes to Porky.  Screenwriters take note, as this serves two purposes: 1) to illustrate the Hipster Squirrel character, and 2) to set up his first meeting with Porky, as Porky ends up grabbing the squirrel, thinking he's one of the axes.  "Whoa!  HOLD IT!!!" says the squirrel.  Porky's not so in the zone that he's not able to stop in time before doing in Hipster Squirrel... kinduva shame, actually.  So bear that in mind, present and future hipsters.  You get too close to the action like that, and you just might get caught your own damn selves.
Porky sees the squirrel and says "So YOU'RE the one responsible for this!"  The ball's in Hipster Squirrel's court at this point.  Hipster Squirrel returns, and takes quite a long time doing it.  You know, to help illustrate that there's no one on God's green earth who's tougher than a male Brooklyn bobby-soxer.  "I'm going to get some shut eye... and so are YOU!" says Hipster Squirrel.  Hipster Squirrel then pokes Porky in his eyes, Moe Howard style.  See, again, this is the problem in a nutshell. (pun intended)  Cartoon violence is supposed to be fanciful and fun, which is why characters hang there a little while before falling off the cliff.  In this case, just as the Stooges cause youth to poke each other in the eyes, so too does this set a bad example, and Porky doesn't seem to be enjoying himself, so at least there's part of the consequence there.

And so, Hipster Squirrel, having vanquished his foe for what he thinks is once and for all, returns to his flat, puts on the purple P.J.s and gets back to relaxing with the racing form.  Make a note of his line, because it's a Call Back at the end... sorry, SPOILER ALERT.  Meanwhile, Porky finds a way around the metal sheet, and sets about sawing the tree down.  Hipster Squirrel marches right back down to ground level to f... mess with Porky a little more.
This is where the baby sapling comes into play.  Hipster Squirrel hooks up the saw to the sapling, thereby causing Porky to struggle.  I'll spare you the description of the outcome, except to say that at least it's cartoonish... albeit strangely perverse.  That's Arthur Davis for you!  Consistently tone deaf.  Not only that, he skimps on the animation, as we only hear Porky fly far away and land in a small pond.  We pan over a MUCH SHORTER DISTANCE THAN WAS IMPLIED... to find Porky in a pond.  Porky emerges from under the water with a cartoon frog on his head.  The frog doesn't have white irises, and sounds like the aliens from Tim Burton's 1996 disaster... I mean disaster picture, Mars Attacks!  Was I the only one who kinda liked that?  Thought so.
The next couple antics are, frankly, ripped straight from the playbook of Screwball Squirrel.  I'll let the suspender gag slide because it's not exact... but again, slightly perverted.  Hipster Squirrel thinks he's gotten rid of Porky, but Porky is, in fact, on the branch right next to him, and Porky's got a shotgun aimed at H.S.'s head.  And Porky actually shoots!  Cold-blooded, dude.  However, the shot damages the branch, and Porky begins to fall, much like the fox in Davis' The Foxy Duckling.  Kinda wish I could see that one again... WITHOUT paying $1.99 on YouTube, that is.  H.S. aids and abets Porky's fall, then adds insult to injury by pretending to cushion Porky's fall... you know, kinda like how Dubya pretended to help these two guys move... damn, YouTube doesn't got it.  But Letterman showed it back in the day!  Say, who's side are you on, anyway?  You helped elect him as president, after all!  But I digress.  And so, Porky lands, and H.S. makes a smart-ass crack about it.  Sorry, but I still prefer how Screwy Squirrel did it.  "Too bad... JUST missed him!" said the squirrel that is screwy.  Love that annoying little nutball.
And so, much like the end of The Mouse-Merized Cat, Hipster Squirrel has a little fun with the now conscious, but dazed Porky.  Porky snaps out of it and gets furious again.  He's about to do something he might regret to that darned old Hipster Squirrel, but Hipster Squirrel takes the two bananas that Porky's holding, and smooshes them onto Porky's face so it looks like Porky's got a banana moustache.  Much like Porky, I'm speechless.  I guess when something like that happens, you gotta stop and go to Plan B.

ACT THREE

Once again, Hipster Squirrel thinks that Porky's gone for good, and so it's back to bed.  However, Porky's got a rather fiendish ace up his sleeve!  It actually frightens H.S. out of house and home... in this case, his tree pad... and runs in fear down the tree for once.  Porky gives chase, firing two rounds at Hipster Squirrel.  That part's kinda funny.  Remember, kids: in a cartoon, even if you're running down a tree, cartoon guns have a hell of a recoil.
Now, here's some rather sloppy direction for ya.  Porky's on ground level, and he runs past the hollowed out log.  Porky fires, and the gun bounces him back to the mouth of the log.  "I'm not so stupid!" says Porky in that redundant, stuttery way of his.  I think he's trying to tell the audience that he knows that the squirrel is inside the log.  First of all, we don't know that, as it wasn't shown to us.  Second, how did he know that the gun was going to position him right at the mouth of the log?  Wouldn't it have been better if Porky just doubled back on his own, without the gun's indirect assistance?  Is this the end of the double take as we know it?  And third, Bugs would say something like "Ah, I knew it all the time."  What I think I'm trying to say is: sloppy direction, Arthur.  Sloppy direction.  Even for you.
And so, Porky knew all the time that that darned old Hipster Squirrel was hiding in the log.  H.S. starts snarling like a bear and scares the fertilizer out of Porky.  At least the animation here looks like some of that old Clampett magic.  Kinda rare for an Arthur Davis cartoon.  He'd fix that later, though.  Drain the fun out of everything, that's his motto.  And so, Porky hides behind the tree.  Hipster Squirrel doubles down, scaring Porky a second time, causing Porky to climb up the tree, really digging his hooves into that poor old tree's bark.  I guess the metal sheet's officially gone.  "You need a vacation worse than I do!" says the Hipster Squirrel.  I'll begrudgingly admit it; that's kinda funny.  Even Hipster Squirrel couldn't screw that up.
Needles to say, it's the last straw.  Also, it's near the end of the pic, so it's dynamite time.  "I'll kill two birds with one stone!" says Porky.  Meanwhile, Hipster Squirrel's about one and a half steps ahead, as he starts piling the red kablooey sticks into the empty log.  Screenwriters take note: yes, this is leading to something.  And so, the fuse is lit.  ...hmm!  I wonder if Mel Blanc just made a hissing noise to simulate a lit fuse.  Yeah, that's probably it.  Never considered that before; that's just how good Blanc is, and how bad Arthur Davis is.  And so, we get the expected reaction from the dynamite and... BOOM!  One last plot surprise.  I almost hate to spoil it... guess I won't, then.  But perhaps I can report that Porky and Hipster Squirrel finally have some common ground, and they both run off into the horizon, although they've got a good amount of distance between each other.  The audio department uses a little bit of... whoops!  Almost spoiled the surprise.  But maybe I can report that H.S. gets hoisted on his own petard, so to speak... damn.  Can't say that, either.  But I will admit that this is actually one of Davis' better cartoons.  Actually, Mexican Joyride may be his best.  It's Daffy Duck in Bully for Bugs, what's there to screw up?  I'm probably not going to show Porky Chops to anyone any time soon, however.  The title may be the best part.

Good double bill with: Wood-Peckin'

**1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Leila Djansi

As we all know, film criticism is the worst thing to afflict mankind since the invention of the wheel, or perhaps the slightly later invention of cronuts.  Circular objects are usually a source of trouble.  But the only thing worse than criticism is not getting ANY criticism at all.  Submitted for your approval: one Leila Djansi, filmmaker director and producer extraordinare.  I mean, look at that IMDb Top 4!  Those look like legitimate movie posters, no?  And check out And Then There Was You.  I mean, Garcelle Beauvais, for God's sake!  Garcelle Beauvais!  ...if you're like me, you probably remember her best from her big scene in 1999's Wild Wild West... shameful of me, I know.  I don't know who suffered more: Barry Sonnenfeld or me.  I'm thinking me!  Anyway, and what about Lynn Whitfield?  I mean, she was Thelma for God's sake!  THELMA... okay, Josephine Baker.  And how many reviews did it get?????  ...care to add one?  See what I mean?  Where's the justice in that?
Oh well.  Anyway, she must be doing something right.  Okay, so the writing and directing's not paying off yet, just breaking even, but the producing is sort of paying off.  Take the movie 37, for example... as it's one of the few available examples of Leila's producing.  It's basically a variation on To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday.  You see, a few hundred years ago most people never lived past the age of 35, so while some might call it mid-life crisis or White Guilt or Arrested Development or any number of pejorative phrases, to the old people in the proverbial frying pan of that loss of youth and relevance, it's hell.  Nothing but pure, uncut hell.  Uncharted territory for mankind as a whole, and pure hell for the people involved, when they realize that God's plan is to take everything from you that he has given: your family, your possessions, your limbs, what have you.  Now, some of you out there might be jaded and say, oh great.  Another movie about a preening white Narcissist musician... but check out the review section of 37!  THREE reviews!  That's, like, three times the review for one Leila Djansi production than she got for ALL Leila Djansi joints!  There's math to be done there, people.
Oh, but why focus on the negative past?  The future's so bright, Leila's gotta wear shades!  And she's got something in the can, so to speak... do they still use cans in this, the new digital age?  Or is it all on hard drives?  We gotta update our lingo already.  Anyway, it's called Hosanna, and it's based on that old Toto song... or maybe not.  Wow, Toto's got their own YouTube channel?  I thought they only had those two music videos!  Go figure.  Anyway, the plot.  Hosanna is the sometimes funny, overall dramatic, award-worthy story of an illegal immigrant seeking a better life for his son in America.  And, depending on who becomes president in 2016, it'll either have a sad or a happy ending.

Oh, right... the Panda

See, if I was really good, I'd of used... have used the headline "Panda Express."  Oh well.  Amateur night this is.  Nothin' but Bush league amateur night.  Anyway, the latest DreamWorks animation kicks complete ass at the box office, and this time it's Kung Fu Panda 3.  Ah, it's just not the same since the SKG crew left to pursue their passion projects, know what I mean?  Now it's a wing of Paramount, which means I gotta order Showtime to see this in three months... something like that.  Yes, nothing like a DreamWorks animation movie to buttress the careers of the fallen.  Mike Myers had the Shrek series, and for Jack Black, the Kung Fu Panda series.  Alas, so far we've only gotten one Yogi Bear movie, so Dan Aykroyd needs something else to do while we all eagerly await the sequel... holy Crap!  It's in the works!  Alas, Aykroyd's plan to turn Nothing but Trouble into a Saturday morning animated series will just have to wait.  A dream deferred is a dream denied, my faithful readers.
Speaking of which, the new Spock's movie The Finest Hours debuts at #4.  Don't people understand?  It's another real-life Titanic-type, Perfect Storm-ish story with lots of good acting with accents!  What do you jaded moviegoers WANT??!!!! ...oh, right.  Meanwhile, J. J. Abrams must not be a happy camper.  I mean, he directed Chris Pine in two Star Trek movies, and he must be like, "Oh... you really want to do this?  You want to go toe to toe with Star Wars, b'atch?  Oh, it's on!  I will CRUSH you!"
And our last debut this week is Fifty Shades of Grey... I mean, Black.  Fifty Shades of Black.  (hmm!  Where have I seen that poster before?)  Well, my heart's breaking for you, Marlon.  He was everywhere the last couple weeks, promoting the hell out of this movie.  Give it some time, and I think this will become a cult favourite ... unless it's too childish or something.  I think all the filmmakers involved with this knew they had to put a little extra effort into it.  I still can't believe there's going to be a sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey.  Sheesh!  It's apparently going to be called Fifty Shades Darker and James Foley's going to direct, which means that the camera at some point is going to come out from behind something... am I the only one to pick up on that?  I guess so!  Time to make a YouTube compilation... I gotta do everything around here.  Seriously, though, I still think this parody is genius.  You've outdone even the Zuckers on this one, Marlon.  The L.A. Times critic seemed to like it!  Despite all the scatological stuff, there's a heart of innocence in there, which is probably more than can be said for the Grey source material.  Someone's got to take rape culture down a couple pegs these days!

Rally 'Round the Casting Office, Boys!

Our next Looney Tunes cartoon is an average affair called Yankee Doodle Daffy... and yet, this one's a childhood favourite?  Why?  How?  How could such a perversion of the path to a normal life take place?  Well, I mostly had access to what was shown on the T.V. at the time, logging as many hours on the VCR as I could, with new tapes magically appearing courtesy of my parents.  Ah, childhood.  When I was growing up, all the cool kids huddled around Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album in fourth grade, something they probably wouldn't admit to today.  No, they all love Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus, just like their kids now do.
But back to me.  This is my blog, damn it.  I think what started my lifelong love affair with Yankee Doodle Dandy... I mean, Daffy... was, of course, Daffy's banjo solo.  For audiophiles like myself, it's the kind of thing you have to listen to more than once.  With audio, it's not all about first impressions.  Sure, the first impression draws you in and all, which is why you want to listen to something a third and fourth time.  Now, the songs of Justin Bieber, for example... usually a first time is more than plenty.
Or maybe it's the simplicity of the plot of Yankee Doodle Daffy that's so refreshing.  Dramatic conflict at its simplest.  Porky's got a job as a casting agent and, much like Oliver Hardy, all he wants is to get to his golf game and relax.  When in comes Daffy Duck, ruining everything as usual.  Daffy takes every piece of Porky's luggage, one at a time, goes to set it down, and then returns to peddle his wares.  His wares?  The hot young talent on the block, Sleepy Lagoon, if the closed captioning is correct.  Sleepy does a mean trick with his giant purple lollipop, but Daffy seems to do all the performing on Sleepy's behalf in this one.  Sleepy's got a guitar case for said lollipop, incidentally, lol.
And so Porky tries to sit there in his now chair of torture and be a horror-show cooperative Malchik, but it soon becomes entirely unbearable.  Porky tries to escape, but Daffy is one step ahead at every turn, blocking every door and... door.  Dang, but that office's got a lot of doors!
However, Porky's fortunes seem to be about to change.  During the big "I'm a Cowboy, Yessir!" number, where Daffy sings along to the tune of... I don't know... but the IMDb knows!  Dayamn, they're good.  And so, much like the yet-to-be-reviewed and far zanier Draftee Daffy, a safe is used to change the direction of the plot.  However, it's Daffy who ends up in the safe here, with Porky locking him in, spoiler alert, rather than Daffy locking in the Draft Board dwarf, with rather sinister consequences.  I thought safes were easy to get out of!  Go figure.  And so, next scene: Porky's on that plane, breathing a sigh of relief.  For a second there, I forgot about what happens next.  Hint: it's kind of like the plane sequence in Northwest Hounded Police, only with more time to breathe.
Now, Wikipedia and the IMDb are full of a wealth of information, but there's one tibdit of knowledge that they don't have currently... I gotta do everything around here.  See, a long time ago in a simler era, kids, there was a show called "Saturday Night Live."  There was barely an internet, and the scourge of internet video and YouTube had yet to be released from the genie's bottle.  And "Saturday Night Live" had yet to be abbreviated to SNL, much like Kentucky Fried Chicken is now KFC.  Anyway, the great Jeremy Irons hosted the show... my God!  1991?  Oh, I feel so old.  Anyway, one of the last skits of the show... I guess they put the, um, less-loved bits towards the end... was a fake commercial he did for classical tunes that have appeared in cartoons.  As only an actor of his stature could, he informed us that the lyrics of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" were actually "Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit!"  Yeah, What's Opera, Doc? always gets cited the most.  But there was one reference that apparently I was the only person in my corner of the West Coast got.  He included a shout-out to the "genuine" lyrics of the William Tell Overture, featuring a clip from the very cartoon I'm reviewing now!  You know, I think I WILL add that to the IMDb!  Maybe not now, but soon.  I'm still a contributor in good standing, I think.  As the old barnyard saying goes, make a nuisance of yourself while you can....... DAMN YOU, JERRY BECK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now, even a slightly dull cartoon like this has to have a finale.  And what a finale.  Daffy says "And now the kid goes into a finale... and WHAT a finale!" ... see how I did that?  And so, we have about eight or nine Daffy Ducks all performing various circus tricks together.  You might notice, however, that some of the Daffies are opaque, and some of them are a little translucent.  That must've been a pain in the ass for the cameraman that day or that week.  So much extra work involved, but it paid off in the long run, like the poor sound engineers who had to endure with Glenn Gould's perfectionism in the recording studio.  As for the glittery pictures of Daffy, well, it makes me think of the old Atari 8-bit computers.  Non-Atari people may want to skip the rest of this paragraph.  Now, the advanced programmers over at Activision, for example, knew how to make multiple player-missiles on different vertical bands of the screen, and not make them glitter.  The programmers over at Atari proper, however, were a little cockier, and we get monstrosities like their take on Ms. Pac-Man, blatantly overusing the four players and four missiles.  I mean, if you're using multiple players and/or missiles for one ghost, they're going to glitter when they cross vertical paths!  Nowadays, the problem is that graphics are just too slow, in my humble opinion.  If you work for Nvidia, don't bother spamming me.  It's true, and you know it.  No amount of machine language trickery will speed up my web browser.
And so, much like non-Atari heads at this point, Porky's had enough of Daffy's salesmanship.  "STOP IT!" Porky says three times, then gives in and decides to see Sleepy Lagoon's act.  Sleepy puts his purple lollipop in its case and goes to work.  I dare not spoil the ending, partly because I didn't even know that it was the great Billy Bletcher supplying his voice.  I'm just still confused about why the Warner Bros. cartoonists would think to do the story of the trials and tribulations of a casting agent like this.  Were they ever afflicted with desperate performers and agents as such?  Well, even Mel Blanc had to get his foot in the door at one point, so perhaps there was some resonance with him.  He'd probably been on both sides of that at one time or another, but more in Porky's shoes when he made it big.  So many copycats trying to take his place.  Ain't it the life, though?

Good double bill with: Duck Soup to Nuts, another Porky v. Daffy affair

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

Auteur Watch - Rachid Djaidani

Damn, a long one.  Well, the IMDb's a great resource and all, but they still don't have everything yet.  For highly detailed information about someone like Rachid Djaidani, you of course have to go to French Wikipedia... I think the dude's French or something.  He started out as an actor, but it's a hard life, and the ungodly hours and inevitable illegal drug use takes its toll.  Take William Hickey, for example.  Why, it seems like only yesterday he looked half-ass human in the likes of Little Big Man before becoming a caricature of an old man, in addition to being an actual old man... is the cultural bias showing or what?
And so, when the looks left him, it was clearly time to become a director... oh, but fiction scripts.  So boring.  His own life's, like, way more interesting than that!  Why not just turn the camera on, and record a brief glimpse into it?  ...okay, okay, one fiction film.  It's called Hold Back or Refrain, according to this Variety review.  Man, everyone's a critic.  Hold Back is the story of a French-Algerian woman who wants to marry a black man... autobiograph much?  There's one problem... well, 40 of them, actually.  Her 40 brothers stand in the way of the marriage... really?  All of them?  Oh well.  It's a journey, not a destination.  They want to get him in a good old fashioned rugby game and knock out a couple of his teeth.  Bring him down to their level a little bit.  Ah, in-laws.
As with all these celluloid types, there's always something in the can, waiting to be shown up on that digital screen.  In Rachid's case, his latest is called Tour de France.  Well, I gotta hand it to him, as he scored a big casting coup: 68 year old Gérard Depardieu... what does he play?  Lance Armstrong?