Auteur Watch - Edward Bland

When you direct a celebrated film like The Cry of Jazz, it must really, really take the wind out of your sails.  But it's important to be able to work in the industry afterwards... you know, pay the bills and what not, so working on a film like A Soldier's Story is a good start.  Of course, he kept bringing it up every five minutes, so they seriously considered firing him from the movie.  The Cry of Jazz is available for free on YouTube and... ugh.  I hated to think it, but I figure it was probably dated.  Can I skip past the bad acting and get right to the good part?  Personally, I kinda prefer this short and sweet analysis of jazz right here..........

Don't Fear the Reboot

You know how people always like to say that it's that time of year when you turn off the feeds from your political friends on facebook?  Well, ever since the controversy surrounding the new Ghostbusters movie began to swirl, I've been thinking about turning off the feeds from some of my cinephile friends who are just completely up in arms over this latest remake.  "It matters," they say.  And, "If you don't know why the Ghostbusters remake is a bad idea, you are a terrible, terrible person."  Sh... stuff like that. 
Well, as far as I'm concerned, the cast of "Saturday Night Live" have a tradition to uphold, and that is one of eventually letting their fans down.  And hard.  Take Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, for example.  They have parts in the new Ghostbusters... are they not complicit as well?  I was at a party once and a guy said "I love Bill Murray.  I'd do anything for that man, I'd watch anything with that man."  Really?  Even Larger than Life?  Even one of the Garfield movies?!!!  Applying the similar test to Dan Aykroyd is much, much easier.  I'd be rather hesitant to meet the man who'd do the same for Dan Aykroyd.
So despite the protestations, it debuts pretty strong at #2.  If there's nothing else on the horizon, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it takes the #1 spot next weekend.  I mean, The Secret Life of Pets is down 50%!  From $100 opening weekend to $50 the next... I mean, that's Matrix 3 numbers.  Owwch.  Meanwhile, Walter White continues his celluloid reign of terror with The Infiltrator, another true story involving the cocaine trade.  Remember: just say no, kids.  Unless you've got really, really great friends, don't ride the White Pony to the end of the dusty trail.  Let's try to cut down on the need for new clean needle clinics for a change.

Some Fava Beans and a Nice Keanu

I dunno... just what do you do with a movie like John Wick?  The latest and the greatest in a long succession of revenge movies, each one more heavily edited than the last.  If it goes by too fast, nothing gets a chance to stick!
Now, my viewing companion was far more enthusiastic than I.  Well, first of all, it's all part of Skinamax... Cinemax's freeview weekend.  Which is good!  But he TiVo'd it off of one of the non-HD Skinamax channels... which is bad.  Don't get me wrong, I love letterboxing as much as the next cineaste, but when it's shrunk down, with horizontal AND vertical letterboxing... I mean, that's just mean.  It's like watching a giant slice of Hubba Bubba bubble gum or something.  The picture quality suffers as well... we might as well be watching it on a giant Zune, for Gawd'z zake!
So there was that.  Then there's the matter of the plot.  Keanu Reeves plays Jack Wick... John Wick, the ultimate assassin who's now retired, and living in a very, very, very big house... hmm!  Did Keanu use his own house for this movie, by any chance?  Anyway, as with Serpico before this and, to a lesser extent, A Thin Line Between Love and Hate, we start at the end of the movie and work our way back to it.  In a rare twist, SPOILER ALERT... they could've shown the end part again, but we skip over it and get a bonus coda!  Lucky us.
And so, we get the part in About Schmidt where Jack Nicholson is puttering around the house after his wife unexpectedly and abruptly passes away.  But before Keanu's wife passes away, played by the always lovely Bridget Moynihan, her final act is to buy Keanu a cute puppy to take care of.  Damn, these filmmakers are good.  And so, Keanu tries to rebuild his life, but it all gets shattered to pieces after a seemingly chance encounter at a gas station.  Oh, and in a bit of Movie Psych 102, we see Keanu pull his expensive Mustang out of the garage twice in the same fashion, with the fake lens flares and everything.  I used to like those lens flares, especially when they were real.
As we come to find out later, Keanu was no ordinary hit man.  Sound familiar?  The Russian mob boss explains to his douchebag son... sound familiar? ... that they used to refer to Keanu as the Boogeyman... or, rather, the guy you hire to get rid of the Boogeyman.  Which brings me next to the subtitles.  The subtitles have special EMPHASIS on certain words, and not just the swear words.  Oh, Saul Bass, you just wouldn't recognize your craft today, I tells ya!
And so, we get the long slog towards Keanu exacting revenge, first against the son, then against the father.  We get Willem Dafoe along for the ride... damn, I thought they did Henry's Crime together... I just realized something.  In Beverly Hills Ninja, Chris Farley ... never mind, it'll take too long to explain.  But in the film, he more or less plays an intrepid private eye, getting various assists by Robin Shou.  The only one that springs to mind is Robin helps Farley from afar by putting his fake moustache back on.  Do not Willem and Keanu have the same dynamic in this film?  Oh, I think they do!!!
There's also similarities to Payback / Point Blank to be had here, mostly centered around a mob-friendly hotel, which Keanu stays at while on his quest during the course of the movie.  Of course, in those other two movies, the mob controlled the hotel outright.  Here, the emphasis is on the fact that the management of the hotel insists that no "business" be conducted on the premises.  The penalties for violating this trust are severe indeed, as what's-her-face finds out later, spoiler alert.  Dare I say it?  We just might have a new Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (Cusack) on our hands!
So, if nothing else, the film has a slight fondness for decorum, or protocol, or whatever you'd want to call it.  That, and GQ-type poses, esp. with Keanu and his car, outside of the hotel.  And I can't help but wonder if decorum or protocol is part of what sets the whole plot in motion in the first place.  They say that John Wick is one of the most dangerous hitmen of all time, including Cretaceous and Devonian... unless you've broken into his own house?  Didn't his Spidey-Sense tingle at all?  I know, I know, we wouldn't have a movie otherwise.  I had to point this out to my viewing companion at one juncture... I think it was the part where the Russian mob boss captures Keanu and ties him to a chair.  You know, like in all the James Bond movies, when the bad guy captures Bond, ties him up, tells him everything about the evil plan, then leaves him alone so he can escape again.
There were some other memorable scenes.  I was scratching my head a bit when the cop comes to Keanu's door and sees one of the 12 dead bodies on the floor behind him.  "Working again?" asks the cop.  "Just sorting some stuff out," says Wick.  The cop leaves soon after that.  You can find it and more at the film's IMDb Quotes page, incidentally.  Another scene that Bill Maher would surely love revolves around the Russian mob using a church as their hideout/bank vault.  Keanu walks in and shoots the priest almost right away, then shoots most of the few people in there praying... of course, most of them were armed, so it's understandable... this was another thing I found myself questioning, but whatever.  If Russian mobsters have the ways and means to take over a whole church and use it for their own special vault, then so be it.  And what's the deal with Russian mobsters anyway?  They're making a big comeback in cinema thanks to Putin, the Trump of the East.  But in a slight nod to bad ethnic casting of the 1950s, a Swede plays the head of the Russian mob named Viggo Mortenson Tarasov.  Was Rade Sherbedzija so busy?... NOW I'M DOING IT!!!!!  How about Armin Mueller-Stahl?  A little closer; his place of birth is now in Russia.
Okay, I admit it, I was entertained, albeit not completely.  I couldn't help but think of the Orlando shootings during the nightclub sequence.  Anyway, you might be saying to yourself, but The Movie Hooligan!  Your complaints up until now are all minor ones.  Any MAJOR complaints?  As a matter of fact, I've just remembered one.  You know how you watch a bad student "film" on YouTube and they'll have a fadeout?  Well, for most of the era of sound movies, when there's a fadeout, there will still be some bit of sound.  If music's playing during the fade to black, it will still play.  Bad student "films" on YouTube will do complete fades to black, sound and picture.  If music is playing, it will fade out.  During the beginning sequence of John Wick, there are a couple of these student film-type edits.  I believe this sets a dangerous precedent in the world of sound editing.  Sure, none of the trade mags will talk about it, even on their quote-unquote "editorial" pages, but I feel strongly about this for some reason.  It's an important part of our shared film lexicon, and it's getting crapped on.  The madness must cease!  We have to have standards, people!  Protocols!  Decorum!  I gotta go...

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Feline Force

Our next Looney Tunes... man, I'm never going to catch up, am I?... the next one is called Kit for Cat.  I don't believe I've ever seen this one before... unless it was called Hare Force.  Ouch!

ACT ONE

The opening music seems to imply an anarchic Bob Clampett affair, but alas, we've had the rug pulled out from under us.  It's just a stuffy ol' Friz Freleng affair... or is it?  I guess we gotta give him props for trying.  He had his dark side, too, after all!
Scene: the garbage can buffet.  Anthony Bourdain... I mean, Sylvester the Cat, is picking through the garbage cans of some alley somewhere.  There's actually some pretty good stuff here!  That's because movie stars, despite their wanting to do their own stunts, don't get to pick through actual garbage.  They only get to pick through carefully prepared movie garbage.  And as the background music informs us, Mammy's little baby wants the good stuff.
Next scene: but then, things get complicated.  Orphan?  Dame?  In this case, the former, in the form of a smaller, oranger cat.  He brushes past Sylvester and finds himself a nice fish skeleton with the blue head and tail still on it.  Sylvester quickly grabs it off the orange cat's plate and issues the usual edict.  "I'm woikin' this side of the street!" sez Sylvester in that usual, extra-saliva-y way of his.  He picks up the orange cat as if he were a garbage can discard, and flings him into a garbage can a little farther down the alley.  We see that the orange cat lands next to an inside joke: Pratt's Cocktail Sherry.
Next scene: whether as the result of Sylvester's cruelty or not, a big gust of wind reinforces the urgency of Sly's situation.  Forget the food; if Sylvester don't get some shelter, Lord he's gonna fade away!  Sly eventually finds his way to a front door and... you know, it's little details like '1623' that I tend not to care about anymore.  I'm well past my movie adolescence, and I've already slaked my thirst on the Room 237s of old.  But I am still a sucker for a good alliteration, and in Sly's panicked state, he cries "Please save a frostbitten feline from a frozen fate!"  As Sly hammers away on the front door, Elmer opens it and gets a couple knocks on his head.  When Sly realizes his mistake, he quickly makes like rigor mortis and falls flat on his back... hmm!  I thought cats didn't do that!  Anyway, there he is on the porch, with a couple teeny icicles on his paws, no less.  It's just that cold out, folks.  Sylvester's looking at Elmer with one eye open; normally, that's a move of the guilty, but I'm not that cynical just yet.  Give a cat a break, for God's sake!  He's desperate!  This is no well-heeled grifter we're dealing with, right?  I think not.  We didn't get that much back story yet, anyway.
Next scene: Sylvester is sitting in a chair next to a comfy fireplace.  "Pwease consider this your home now, Mr. Pussycat!" says the comforting Elmer.  Now, I know normally a line of dialogue like that would be at the beginning of a gruesome hostage pic or something like that.  Yes, my Hipster Spidey Sense is tingling, but I don't think Elmer's going there.  Spoiler alert: I know ahead of time that Elmer, in fact, is in for a gruesome time of his own, tee hee hee!

ACT TWO

There's another knock at the door, and Elmer goes to investigate.  Now it's the orange kitten's turn, only he ends up knocking on Elmer's knees instead of his head... sorry, chest instead of head.  Some part the orange kitten's got!  No lines!  Oh, but don't be fooled, folks.  He's practically co-star here, as it happens... I'm just assuming it's a he.  I mean, for Gawd'z zake!  Sylvester treating an underage female kitten that way... tisk tisk.  The orange kitten lies there on the porch, but still keeps one eye on Elmer.  You know, just in case Elmer tries to pull anything funny.  "Another orphan of the storm!" says Elmer, as he gently carries cat #2 into the warm inside.
Next scene: Sylvester's lounging in the chair by the fireplace has been thoroughly disturbed by this plot development.  Screenwriters take note, incidentally, because this is a work of genius.  Oh sure, Friz probably won't do anything to write home about with it, but genius nonetheless.
And so, here we are.  Another semi-textbook example of ... opportunity cost?  Arbitrage?  Both, maybe?  The point being, Elmer feels the need to pick one.  Also, it is good plotting.  I've been told that Looney Tunes are "conflict-based" cartoons; sumpthing like that.
Anyway, this is probably where Act Two really begins in proper.  Elmer does a little thinking out loud, and says to the two cats "I can't keep BOTH of you!"  Cruel bastard... sure, he says that now, but once we look around this mansion of his, it kinda seems to me that he's got room for many, many cats.  I mean, take Porky Pig in Kitty Cornered, for example!  He had a rather modest suburban household in that one, and he had four cats!  Yeah, four!  Oh well.  I guess fellow animals look out for their fellow animals... at least, up to a point.
Anyway, back to Elmer and his pwedicament.  Elmer says "Dear me... TWO cats!  I'd wike to have a cat awound the house, aww wight... but I can't keep BOTH of you!"  That's Sylvester's cue.  Looking scornfully at the teeny weeny orange cat, Sly gives it a good swift kick out of frame.  But the teeny orange cat's a tough little bugger, and he quickly returns to his spot on the dark orange rug.  Elmer goes to pick it up.  The orange cat starts licking Elmer, and nuzzling up against his face... maybe it's a female cat after all!  For some reason, I don't remember a guy cat being so affectionate.  And I've owned... I mean, I've been possessed by a couple cats in my lifetime.  They do seem to like their faces rubbed; apparently, they've got scent glands in their face that they like to deploy a lot.
Elmer's clearly smitten.  He laughs his trademark, iconic, epic laugh and says "Baby kittens are so cute!"  He apparently was 49 years old when he made this... and he kinda sounds it.  Anyway, acting quickly, Sylvester quickly dyes his hair black and gets a hoodie... I'm sorry, I'm thinking human trying to act young.  No, Sly grabs a bottle and a giant blue bonnet.  Sly also gets a giant pillow to recline against, lol.
And so, Sly starts drinky-winkin' away on the bottle, and kicking his hind feet like a baby.  Now, Elmer was born at night, but it wasn't last night.  Oh, he is so not having any of Sylvester's new-fangled antics.  "What a widicuwous way for a gwown-up cat to behave!" scolds Elmer in the general sense.  "Act your age!" Elmer scolds Sly more specifically.  Hey, lemme tell you something, Elmer.  Standards may have been higher back then... or were they?  Maybe things were always skanky, even though it was definitely not reflected in the Golden Age of Cinema, thanks to the Hays Code and its many practitioners.
Elmer gets a frown over his face, reminiscent to me of the expression on his face before Bugs sees the mirror at the bottom of a serving platter in Slick Hare.  Probably the same animator or something.  I haven't gotten that fetishistic yet about the works of individual Warner Bros. animators.  "Hmm!" says Elmer.  Now, screenwriters take note.  In order to pad this out to one-reel length, Elmer decides he needs to sleep on it.  Now, the more cynical amongst you... and I include myself in this case... er, it seems to me that Elmer's alweady made up his mind, he just doesn't want to do anything about it yet.  He hasn't said anything positive about Sylvester, and he repeats again, before ascending his gilded wooden staircase, "Baby kittens are SO CUTE!!!!"  They are, but they need a lot of love and attention from their indifferent mothers.  I guess the orange kitten has matured enough to not need large helpings of mothers' milk anymore.  Tough world out there, folks.  A hard world for little things.
Next scene: the pacing again, just as in Canary Row.  Always with the pacing.  It's Sylvester's trademark, no question... maybe Wile E. Coyote as well, but Sylvester seems to do it a lot in his pictures... and this one deviates from that rule slightly.  I think this is the only instance here where Sly paces back and forth, with visions of killing the orange cat dancing in his head.  What should it be?  Noose?  Gun?  ...railroad tracks?  No, something more modest and, more importantly, practical.  The tracks are too far away for one, and he'd be leaving the comfort of his new found sanctuary, for two.  Windy and snowy out!  DERR!!!!!
FIRST ATTEMPT: Get a load of this, folks!  A cat calling to another cat!  Sly's got a saucer and a bottle of milk.  Oh, we're through the looking glass, folks.  No two ways about it.  Sly has an easier time saying "kitty" than of saying "pussy."  Something about the letter 'p' that really makes the saliva fly, but Sly works through it asbestos he can.
Ever the faithful lap dog, the orange cat comes bounding up to see what all the fuss is.  And just before you think Sylvester's actually going to feed the orange cat, well... gee, I kinda hate to spoil it, so I guess I'll just say that Sly frames the orange cat.  Okay, he dumps out the bottle of milk onto the orange cat, then drops the empty glass bottle, which shatters into a couple large pieces ... and who knows how many untold tiny slivers of glass.  Oh, ye know of what I speak, dontcha?  Yeah, isn't it always fun getting one of those teeny slivers lodged in your big toe, thinking that you've cleaned up all the fallout from that glass you dropped a couple days ago?  Ah, memories.
Sylvester assumes the accuser's position by the kitchen doorway as Elmer approaches.  "What's going on here?" asks Elmer... wow!  No extra 'w's this time!  A good start.  Sly points his thumb at the guilty orange cat.  Elmer walks over, looks at the damage and asks "...did YOU do that?"  The orange kitty looks up as innocently as possible.  It would take too long to explain that he got framed, I suppose.  Anyway, you'll just never guess what Elmer's going to say next... never in a million... sorry, I mean, never in a miwwion years!  Spoiwer awert: that's wight, he takes pity upon the poor little orange kitten, and starts unloading the fridge for it.  Sylvester starts beating his head against the door frame.  Now I hate to direct from the back seat, but it's funnier when Sly just continues to beat his head against the frame, and not look over in between.  He looks over twice at the nightmare he's created, but beats his head the rest of the time.  Elmer says "Here, have some nice milk... and some dewicious cheese... and hamburger!  And pickewd hewwing, and smoked bawwacuda... sawami, bawoney..."  Man!  Enough, already!  Even the greediest of foodies pace themselves a li'l bit...

SECOND ATTEMPT: To cut to the chase, Sylvester doubles down on the broken dishes concept, but it takes him a while to get there.  We start with a bright powder blue ball of yarn... another moment of zen.  A cat rolling out a ball of string for another cat, and yet not being enthralled by it himself.  Sylvester is clearly a human in disguise.
And so, Sly rolls out the ball of string, rolling it past the orange cat, seen resting atop a large powder green pillow.  The orange cat may be tuckered out from a rough night in the cold, duking it out with Sylvester... but this is a ball of string we're talking about!  The orange cat goes to work playing with it, and this part's interesting, because we hear an instrument from the orchestra that we don't usually hear, especially not with this kind of solo.  It seems to be a jazz vibraphone!  Not heard since You Ought to be in Pictures... boy, the internet's slow today.  Alas, I don't have my copy of "The Carl Stalling Project" on CD anymore.  It's the track that starts off with "You Ought to Be in Pictures," then moves on to the soundtrack for a cartoon made by Porky.  As you can guess with a cartoon within a cartoon, it looks deliberately lame.
But let's get back to the cartoon at hand.  As it happens, the other end of the ball of string is tied to a precarious stack of dishes.  Sylvester stands next to it, smiling, confident in its imminent collapse but... keeping an eye on it anyway?  A different time, folks, a different time.  After the mighty crash, the orange cat rushes in to see what happened.  The orange cat looks at the dishes, then looks to Stage Right.  Next scene: we see Elmer coming down the stairs, putting on his trademark... twademawk bwue bathwobe.
Next scene: Sylvester's got a big smile on his kisser, and he looks over at the orange cat.  Sly's smile turns to shock, as he sees the orange cat with a jar of glue, quickly putting all the dishes back together.  So what does Sly do?  Why, he quickly runs over and starts smashing the dishes that the orange cat has quickly put back together, of course!  He knows that Elmer's on his way, right?  A quick pan to the right and... surprise, surprise.  There's Elmer, looking angrily at Sylvester, who's busy smashing the glued-together dishes.
Sly eventually notices Elmer... but just like that cat recently seen on "The Daily Show" knocking over that glass anyway, Sly still can't help but drop the dish that he's got in his guilty-ass paws.  "SO!  Bweaking my dishes!" says Elmer.  Now... what Elmer says next is... well, actually, the words verbatim aren't so important to me, and they might not to be to you either if you get the gist of it.  The gist of it is this: Sylvester's either in hot water or on thin ice.  Now, to again quote another film, under any other circumstances, Sylvester's ass would be as dead as fried chicken... or back out in the snow as fried chicken?  No, that doesn't work, does it?  Anywho, a bit of a plot device, don't you think?  Elmer's handing out second chances like free tickets to an Everclear concert.  To be fair, it's still early in the film; I guess this isn't the big finale yet.

THIRD ATTEMPT: Sylvester's sitting there like (Rodin's?) Angry Thinker, while the orange cat plays with Sly's tail.  I wonder if that's on YouTube yet... and I mean, real live cats playing with each other's tails.  But that's how numberous... numerous cat videos are now.  There's way too many sub-genres, and there's just way way too many cat videos in general.  But this is how strapped for ideas Sylvester is: he gets his next idea literally from the first thing he sees.  True, it happens to be an ancient-looking book on "how to be a hypnotist."  And for once, Friz passes up an opportunity for a self-reference.  In fact, I don't think I've seen one yet!  Why, he could've had the book written by "Dr. Friz Ph.D." or some such, but alas, the book's author and publisher are covered up by the elephant-shaped bookend.  And for those of you out there who are reading this instead of doing your SQL homework... GET BACK TO WORK!  Those tables aren't going to outer join themselves!!
Next scene: Sly has quickly mastered the art of hypnotism, and is already shooting bright green oscilloscope rays out of his paws.  The orange kitten is his slave, slowly doing Sly's bidding... which just involves walking for now.
Next scene: Elmer's bed, where Elmer is sound asleep.  Boy!  That dude must be a heavy sleeper, what with all the racquet going on around him.  And so, Sylvester faces his greatest challenge as a communicator in general, and as a hypnotist less specifically.  Dazed and hypnotized, the orange cat now stands on the foot of Elmer's bed, baseball bat in paws, waiting for the right kind of guidance.
"The head!  The HEAD!  ON THE HEAD!" Sylvester whispers as loudly as he can.  Um... you can probably guess that it's not going to turn out the way he hoped.  After all, even the most lucid of lucid dreamers have things they won't do... say their own names while dreaming, for one.  Don't know why that one's so tough, but it is.
Dazed, and with a fresh red lump upon the top of his little kitty head, Sylvester climbs into bed with Elmer.  This wakes up Elmer rather instantly.  No grogginess, no bouts of blinking, just up and gazing upon Sylvester.  Next scene: practically at rigor mortis, especially given what he's about to do, Sylvester walks down Elmer's grand staircase... except with his head rather than his feet.  Sylvester's pace down the steps is exactly three beats a second; it's taken me a lifetime of watching cartoons to know that.
That old softie Elmer says "If I'm disturbed ONCE MORE..."  Oh, puh-LEEEEZE.

FOURTH ATTEMPT: Sylvester gets his mischievous paws on a wind-up mouse.  He winds it up and sets it loose.  It whizzes past the orange kitten.  Incidentally, if you're thinking that the orange kitten is more suited to an Arthur Davis Looney Tunes cartoon, he is.  But, if Davis were making this cartoon, he'd probably have two no-name cats and a no-name human homeowner taking them both in.  He was kinda cocky that way; it was his way of trying to be different, I suppose.
The orange cat instantly wakes up, and has the shock lines emanating from his head... just the one wave.  The orange kitten springs into action, and starts hopping around like it's had too much catnip or something.  LOL!  I like how its claws are out, and it's bouncing around.  Reminds me of my cat when I get some string out.  Man, but can she claw up a formerly new rug with her claws, going after that string.
Now, this all may seem frivolous at first, but the result makes Sly look like a mad genius.  The toy mouse heads for the rather large mouse hole in the wall... why these cartoon homeowners tolerate those things, I'll never know.  Better than television, I guess.  The orange kitten is just large enough to fit, and it chases the toy mouse into the mouse hole.  I'm pretty sure this is a first as well.  It's usually "living" cartoon mice that go into the holes in the wall.  This is the first time I can remember in a lifetime of cartoon watching when a toy mouse went into a real mouse hole... ANYWAY, once the orange cat's in the wall, Sylvester is right there with a board and a bunch of nails and... yup, he entombs the cute orange kitten inside the wall.

ACT THREE

This is probably a good place for the proverbial Act Break.  It's about the two thirds mark anyway, and we start with Sylvester back by the fireplace, reclining in the chair.  All is right with the world.  I certainly can't think of what will burst this bubble.  Can you?
Next scene: we see the board over the mouse hole, but in cel background form... what happens next, for some reason, reminds me of the opening scene from The Frighteners.  That's not even a word, is it?  Lemme check Words With Friends(TM) a minute... just checked!  It is NOT!  And neither is the plural!  HAH!
...where was I?  Oh yeah.  Ever the resourceful one, the orange cat now wreaks untold havoc for Sylvester, as it apparently now has access to the entire house from within the mouse hole.  But maybe he's searching for another way out.  The only way the orange cat can find to escape is to pound out all the nails in the wall.  Now, you might be thinking, well... what's the harm?  Well, the first one the orange cat tries happens to be holding up a painting.  Surprised, Sylvester runs over and catches it just before it wakes up Elmer with its potentially deafening crash on the floor.  Next: the rack holding up a bunch of dishes.  Kudos to the sound people for the nail at 5:04... I don't know what they used for when Sylvester was pounding in that piece of wood at 4:50, but the one at 5:04?  Oh, that's the real f... real deal Holyfield right there, that I can tell you!!  Ugh... we gotta take that phrase back from the Drumpf-ster, I'm sorry.
The teeny cat makes its way up to the master bedroom, and to the light fixture right above Elmer's noggin.  Sylvester gets himself a giant stepladder and a screwdriver to try and undo the teeny orange cat's damage, but... alas, Sly was too prepared, but too late.  It's a fine line, to be sure, but in this case, he needed to be quicker on the draw, so to speak.  We don't see Elmer injured in his very bed, but Sly's face says it all, all to well...
Now, you might have a problem with what happens next, as do I.  But bear in mind, we still have about two minutes to go, and cartoon characters are arguably more used to assassination attempts in bed.  As for the mom in A.I. who rolls over in bed and almost gets her eye taken out by young David, well... consequences are a little more severe.  But Elmer does tell Sylvester that it's the last straw.  Then he goes into this whole thing about "If I hear ONE MORE SOUND..."  Seems more like the second to last straw to me!  Sylvester gives Elmer a good "BLAH!" for good measure... although it does sound a little politically incorrect, on second thought.
Now, I'm going to take this opportunity to criticize the filmmakers.  At 5:39, when Elmer slams his bedroom door, the color of the second floor banister changes from light brown to dark brown.  But who knows?  Maybe it had a spotlight or two on it.  But the next part I cannot forgive.  Sylvester looks down at the first floor... for a little too long... then looks shocked.  Bad plotting, guys.  Bad plotting.
Next scene: While Elmer was issuing his latest angry edict to Sly... you know, about the 'one more sound' and all... the teeny orange cat went from happy thoughts to thoughts of revenge, as evidenced by the guilty looking devilish smile that crept over its cute, orange face.  But what to do?  Well, for starters, it found Elmer's single-barrel shotgun, and Sly looked on in horror from the second floor as the teeny orange cat started trying to fire it.  Sylvester's first strategy is to try to reason with the orange cat, shushing it and all that... but to no avail.  The teeny orange cat has made up its teeny orange mind, and firing that shotgun is its new purr-pose in life... sorry, sorry.  Sylvester's new plan is to somehow muffle the sound, and this one he enacts quickly.  One pair of earmuffs on Elmer, then it's back downstairs to get that gun.  There's a weird engine noise at 5:47 when Sly goes back down to get that darned old shotgun away from the other cat.  And yes... we go into Quiet Please! mode now, specifically the part after Butch the bulldog issues a similar edict to Tom Cat, which Jerry Mouse overhears.
Sly grabs the shotgun in an attempt to keep the cute orange cat (no name, according to the IMDb and Wikipedia) from firing it.  But once it's in Sylvester's paws... it won't stop firing!  Owwch.  Irony of ironies.  Sly tries to stop it the only way he knows how: by plugging up the barrel with his finger.  Something they never, ever tried on MythBusters, I'm sure... not even with a mannequin's hand.  But they did build that giant Lego ball!  Anyway, the gun eventually runs out of ammo... reminds me of the Cat Burglar episode of The Simpsons.  The orange cat's next feat of making extra acoustical energy: a giant drum.  Sly quickly takes it away from the teeny cat, and the teeny cat moves on to the next thing: slamming doors.  Really?  Seriously?  You and I may not be impressed, but Sly sees the threat.
With the first door, two pictures fall off the wall.  Sly puts his foot in the way of the second, and the orange cat slams the door right on poor ol' Sylvester's right foot.  We all stop and watch respectfully as each of Sly's three toes pops back out into place.  The orange cat even stops its Sherman-like march of wanton destruction to watch the healing in action.  Now, I hate to be cynical and suggest that it's close to the end, even though it is, but for Sylvester it's the last straw.  The top of his head pops off, and a ship's horn sounds as a veritable fountain of lava shoots from Sly's brain.  He's mad.  Really, really mad.  The orange cat's gotten the best of him for the last time... or so Sly thinks.
No, the teeny orange cat's still one step ahead, and it continues in its pursuit to piss off Elmer that one last time that he keeps threatening.  The cat turns on the radio, and we hear a bad radio drama, starring Mel Blanc and Bea Benaderet, no less!  You can read all about it here.
Anyway, after turning on the automatic piano, the orange cat tries knocking on Elmer's door to wake him up, and tries running past it with the gun and a loud bell, but all to no avail.  Man, but can that tiny fatboy outrun Sylvester!  He's always anywhere from one to five steps ahead of the large black and white cat.

EPILOGUE

The orange cat has found himself a large serving pan and serving spoon.  He tries beating the spoon against the pan while being chased by Sylvester, but then a genius thought hits him: why not beat the pan with... Sylvester?  The orange cat comes to a quick stop, and Sly slams into the pan head first.  You know how sometimes when a cartoon character hits a wall and turns into a plunger?  Bob Clampett did that in Kitty Cornered, if memory serves.  Same thing, but without the turning into a plunger part.
Welp, can't argue with results!  The good news is that Elmer's now awake.  The bad news is he's mad at both cats, clearly.  Elmer just can't tell the difference between good noise and bad noise.  Slightly similar to the ending of Hare Force when Grandma's just trying to get the noise to stop, but I wanted Bugs and the dog to keep going.  Every time one of them landed on their ass, there was a new sound effect!  What would be next?  Keep going!
Elmer says "I've (finawwy) made up my mind who's weaving these pwemises!"  There's complete silence.  Wow!  Even the radio show stops!  You could hear a pin drop.  But before Elmer gets the chance to say who he's throwing out, Yosemite Sam's cousin comes in... well, his arm, anyway.  Sam's cousin is an Irish cop, I'm guessing.  Elmer gets handed an eviction notice and, as you can see from the frame grab I've provided, the bulk of the boilerplate is an upside down typewriter rubric.  Looks like Russian, don't it?  It's like how playing a tape backwards of people talking sounds like Swedish or Swahili.  One of the 'Sw' languages.
Next scene: back where we began, to the garbage can buffet.  First Sylvester, then the orange cat.  They're both strangely happy now.  They both pass on the same apple core.  Now, you might not have guessed, but Elmer has joined them in the alley... and he takes the apple core!  Frankly, it's a lesson for all middle class Americans: there wasn't any social mobility back then, either.  But if I had to ascribe an Aesop's fable to all of this, it's either the one about the crow and the pebbles, or something along the lines of... if you don't clean up your own mess, eventually someone else will, and it won't be pretty.

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

Auteur Watch - Ed Cambridge

Oh, don't kid yourself.  'Crackhead #2' in Deep Cover was a big deal!  Michael Tolkin, for God'z zake!  Something from his The Player period.  But that's how it goes, sometimes.  Where's Ed's head shot?  You're telling me no one who runs a Hollywood gift shop can't step over to a scanner and get 'er done?... close enough.  Just type "Edmund Cambridge" in the search feature on this page and you'll jump right to it.  He was kind of a big deal in theatre, but apparently never developed a taste for film or TV directing.  Working on "227" must've been a bad, bad experience.

America Needs Blockbusters

What a weekend of cinema classics that will last a lifetime.  Bah humbug... that's IT!  I was dreaming I was eating hamburger!  In fact, I had three entrées total, all centered around beef in one way or another.  I don't even want to speculate on what was missing when I awoke, though.  Anyway, The Secret Life of Pets is #1 this weekend.  For some reason, I am not a fan.  The premise seems like something that would have been big if Pixar existed in the 1960s.  Why, even The Onion reviewer doesn't seem to like it that much... or are they just afraid of being awesome?  Ah, skip it.  I'm too tired to taunt my fellow reviewers today.  Of all the promotions and cross-promotions for the movie, I scratched my head the hardest at one commercial that featured the Rolling Stone song about the devil.  Why, I believe it's called "Sympathy for the Devil," in fact!  Nothing that the censors can't eliminate, of course... not like AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap."  Why, that's the song equivalent of "The Anarchist's Cookbook," practically... am I in trouble for using that book's title?
But that's the movie landscape now.  We've got Pixar-ish at #1, Pixar at #3 (Dory), and the CGI-FX heavy The BFG at #8.  That makes me sad, America.  Why you gotta pick on Spielberg like that?  Well, if Indiana Jones 5 isn't #1 its opening weekend, well... he's just going to quit the biz completely after that. 
So, the Pixar contingent is in the house.  In live-action douchebag news, something with the long-ass title called Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates debuts at #4.  Personally, I think Zac Efron's getting the short end of the stick, having Adam Devine as his brother, but what do I know?  I'm so out of the loop.  As you can see from the movie's poster on the IMDb, they didn't want to risk a red penis drawn on one of their bodies.  Save that for the unrated version, I suppose.  They'll cover up the boxes, just like supermarkets cover up the steamier issues of "Cosmopolitan."  I was looking at the résumé of one Jake Szymanski, the credited director of Mike and Dave.  And from the looks of it, this is his make or break moment.  He's spent the last eight years in Short Video hell.  As in, a viewer would be in hell if they had to sit there and watch all these things he's worked on, one after the other.  Funny or die, indeed.  Hard to say what influenced Jake's choice of lighting and frame composition more.  Was it "Zac Efron's Pool Party"?  Or was it "It's the Ass 'n Balls Show!"?  To show he's not a blatant sexist, there's also "Kelly Brook's Cameltoe Shows."  Wonder if that's on YouTube yet?  ...and how!  As of this writing, however, it's only got under 200,000 views.  This video, "Camel Toe Prank" has 12 million, and features an actual camel.  See?  You never go wrong with cute animals.  As for directors, well, even Andrew Niccol got tired of doing short films, so perhaps Jake Szymanski's making the right move here.  Hopefully, he'll parlay all his Mike and Dave success into his next film... which will probably be a Mike and Dave sequel, either directly or indirectly.  It's a thriving genre in its own right, the Wedding Crashers genre.  It can't be helped.
The only other debut this week is something called Sultan... oh, these IMDb pages are getting too long.  Well, I don't know where in America this 3 hour movie about a fictional mixed martial artist is playing, but they must be doing something right to crack the Top 10 like this!

Looking at You, I Can Read Your Mind or All Drones Great and Small

In retrospect, could Eye in the Sky be the greatest film ever made about drones and the changing face of war in the 21st century?  Or is it just the latest and greatest?  The A-lister cast and the bootstrapping crew certainly think so!  Alas, I have yet to see Andrew Niccol's take on the subject, which is called... I have to look it up... Good Kill?  Well, Eye seems to be winning the title war so far.
I will admit that I was pleasantly surprised.  I still subscribe to the theory that the director makes the film, so knowing that this was directed by the guy who directed one of the Wolverine movies, I had low expectations.  Oh why oh why do I always read ahead to the end of the book.  Now sure, you're saying, but The Movie Hooligan!  Number one, why do you have to be such a jerk, and two, what about Rendition?  The movie that single-handedly brought down the Nixon Administration?  Well, I guess my answers would be, 1) aw, you're just trying to make me cry.  And 2) lots of movies were trying to bring down whoever was president during those dark years.  I'm thinking it was probably Bill Clinton's fault.  How that bad boy with the twinkle in his eye could end up being president for 16 years, we'll never know.  I thought we had a constitutional amendment to prevent such abuse of power and what not!  Anyway, somehow Rendition seemed a little too generic.  But the movie promises what's in the title: a dude does indeed get rendition-ated, all for our viewing pleasure.
But while the reasons for the renditionizing in Rendition are all but forgotten, Eye in the Sky starts with the promise and premise that all this fancy new drone technology is, in fact, helping the good ol' U.S. of A. kind of get all those pesky Top 10 terrorists off the list, and to replace them with new ones.  And they social mobility is a thing of the past!  We meet a couple of young drone pilots who may have one of the best commutes you'll ever see.  Two minutes of walking and they're at work... but is it really so great?  I have to drive about 40 minutes each way to work currently, but on the bright side I get to catch up on all my music CDs!
And so, the stage is set.  Time is spent preparing to get to the event we're supposed to spy on.  And we're introduced to the brand new technology that the Pentagon doesn't want us to know about: microdrones!  One shaped like a hummingbird, one like a beetle.  Sure, they're helpless against curtains and closed windows, but they get the job done, and they help our highest of army commanders to get real-time info of what's happening ground-side.  And soon, there it is.  The nightmare incarnate.  We see a video camera, we see terrorists making a suicide video for posting to Terrorist YouTube (...Vimeo?  Oh, s'z'nap!)  We see a bunch of tiny barbells, we see said barbells getting loaded into a vest.  All those things we've come to expect in an episode of Homeland, part of the new visual lexicon that is 21st Century terrorism, and it's all right there.  All being viewed in secret, all waiting to be acted upon by our specialized Armed Forces, tied up with a little bow or ribbon.
Seems a little too neat and tidy, don't it?  What are the odds, anyway?  Well, army chief Helen Mirren says she's been waiting six years for this moment, so it must not be that common of an occurrence.  Surely there are other things on her plate!  Meanwhile, $#!t gets too real... I mean, stuff, for the two young drone pilots.  They spot that little hula hoop girl we met earlier, selling bread right next to the spot that the Army wants to blow up real good.  And then...
...the machinery grinds to a halt.  It's downright magical.  We don't go as far off the rails as, say, Where the Wild Things Are, nor do things get wrapped up as neatly and as tidily as they do in Toy Story 2.  Mind you, my more military-minded viewing companion started complaining, saying that they would just bring in a drone pilot who'd be a little more willing to do the deed than Aaron Paul and that fetching young lass... who was that, anyway?  I'm thinking Eva Green... nah, it's just Phoebe Fox.  Looks like she's the new Liv Tyler.  Incidentally, her character is named Gina Gershon... I'm sorry, it's Carrie Gershon.  A little less ethnic, I guess.
Others get involved as well.  Helen Mirren's boss... you know, the guy from the first Die Hard... is watching, and a few of Britain's highest government mucky mucks are watching all of this as well.  They start fussing over the little girl, too, wondering what the press will say when they find out that... yada yada yada.  You get the idea.  Something tells me the screenwriters got the idea when they saw that photo of Hillary Clinton with President Obama when they took out Bin Laden.
For some reason, I'm reminded of an episode of The Simpsons that was particularly brutal to network executives.  See, one of the things that (TV) network executives do that bug the entertainers is provide little critiques, or "notes."  For Krusty the Klown, the last straw was an executive giving him notes on the air!!!!  Everybody wants to get into the act.  Well, there's a similar dynamic at work in the Drone Room.  It's become War by Committee.  Half are saying, this is a once in six years shot, and we have to take it, and the other half are saying DON'T BLOW UP THE LITTLE GIRL.  I confess, I got caught up in the dramatic tension!
Alas, the complexities of the real world come knocking on the door to make a simple situation more complex.  There's the side-drama of a micro-drone operator, with boots on the ground... why do I feel so dirty using that phrase?  Anyway, he provides a concurrent dramatic thread; will he be able to avoid detection by the local machine gunners that patrol the neighborhoods?  They come up with a plan to get the little girl out of there; this I dare not spoil any further.
Indeed, I risk spoiling the rest of the plot, so perhaps I'll just cut to the chase.  Alan Rickman ends up getting the right toy, and the two young drone pilots have had the worst shift of their lives.  I'm further reminded of the end of Oliver Stone's small film in-between the big ones from 1988, Talk Radio.  Howard Stern-esque shock jock, and Anthony Bourdain precursor Eric Bogosian goes through a long, dark night of shocking his audience.  However, he finds that the audience is shocking him right back, and it's tying his soul up in knots, wringing out every last drop of soul juice he has left.  This seems to be his last night of shock-jocking, as he seems to be giving it his all, and writing his Ph.D. thesis, if you will.  At the end of the show, however, boss Alec Baldwin, of all people, says to him "Great show, man.  See you tomorrow."  Same thing happens to the two drone pilots.  The boss thanks them for a good job, and says "See you bright and early..."  I forget when... 0600 or something.  Incidentally, the boss is also the film's director, Gavin Hood.  No wonder I've never seen him before!  We've got our new Peter Strauss, people.  Rejoice.
So, to conclude... ick.  Terrible segué... I'm not up on the drone sub-genre of war pics, but so far Eye in the Sky seems to be at the top of the class.  I don't want to go out too far on a limb, but it may very well be the Dr. Strangelove of drone pics.  I guess that makes Good Kill the Fail-Safe?  As for the drones themselves, well, it's a paradigm shift, no question.  There's the abolishing of the draft with Vietnam, so now we have an all-volunteer army.  Now the volunteers are piloting drones.  Also, the film seems to harken back to the days when we... some were fixated on that stupid deck of cards approach to the hierarchy of bad guys we wanted to get.  Then we started hearing about several new #2 guys in al-Qaida.  Sure, Eye in the Sky may not have all the answers, but at least for me it paints a very current picture of the modern battlefield.  A battlefield fraught with moral quagmires and blurry boundaries, spilling over to our airports, and soon to our water sources and highways!  I can't wait!

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

A Rabbit's History of the United States

Our next Looney Tunes is another Friz Freleng meh-sterpiece, and it's called Bunker Hill Bunny.  Well, let me put it this way.  Oh, the things you remember.  The useless things accumulated over a lifetime.  Evolutionary adaptation, my ass.  There was a show on Fox, I believe, long, long ago.  The ad for it went like this: "Bob and Doug (McKenzie), Wayne and Garth, Bill and Ted, Beavis and Butthead... Eric and Donny?"  Don't worry... I'll try to explain what I mean in a minute.

ACT ONE

This is how most people see cartoons, I think.  We begin rather immediately after the director's credit fades out... with a gigantic explosion.  Who could it be?  Elmer getting rid of some stumps on his estate with good old fashioned dynamite?  Elmer shooting at Daffy or Bugs?  Well, not Daffy... how about Yosemite Sam?  Nope, the culprit is the year 1776.  You know, Britain's last big fight before breaking off relations with America forever and ever... we're treated to the rather strange still painting, shown above, of some Red coats doing close gun battle with a regiment of... I'm going to say Puritan farmers.  It reminds me of a scene from Friz's other masterpiece, Hare Trigger, and the one shootout that Bugs and Sam have in an empty train car.
Anyway, back to the earlier reference I made to what ended up being called "New York Daze"... sheesh.  It was originally called "Too Something."  I think because the commercial came on during The Simpsons is the reason I know that.
So, the cartoon informs us that the setting is 1776.  First, we see the fighting in Bunker Hill, presented quite austerely, but with an air of silliness... firing at such close range, but with neither side flinching.  It's almost as if they're a painted background or something.  Next, the lettering informs us that we're seeing Yorktown going up in flames, but with soldiers heroically leading the way.  Those two, Bunker Hill and Yorktown, are your proverbial Bill and Ted, Wayne and Garth, etc.  Now we come to the Eric and Donny, and it's called ... Bagle Heights?  Gone are the simple soldiers from earlier, for now we are treated to two fortified forts, firing it out for domination of the land.  Their flags are "They" and "We," respectively.  Now, the "They" side has six guns firing away, with the authority of the Carl Stalling Orchestra's timpani section to underscore it.  "We" has one cannon, and it sounds like... like... a pop gun?  A chewing gum bubble?  A little toy gun used by a professional movie studio's sound department.  The "We" cannon fires twice.  The "They" cannons fire about a dozen shots for the "We" side's two.  You'd think that it's no contest, but no.  Both sides are equally matched.
The firing stops, and the crickets start.  There's just nothing in any Army manual to prepare you for the quiet times.  The commander of the "They" fort emerges ("Yosemite" Sam) and calls out to the enemy.  Well, that's one way to do it.  We saw Bugs' arm operating the "We" cannon earlier, so we know what Yosemite is to expect.
"A rabbit!  Haw haw..." says Sam.  Bugs counteracts Sam's sarcasm, saying "And just who do you think you are?"  Sam informs us that his name is "Sam von Schmamm, the Hessian" in this one.  It seems that in every cartoon he's in, his name never actually is Yosemite Sam.  He always seems to have a different nickname each time... but I'm no expert, I'll give you that.
But whatever character Sam tries to pretend to play, he's always the same: full of bluster and pride.  (not even attempting a German accent... probably a smart move)  He unironically informs Bugs that he's got Bugs outnumbered "one to one," adding "Surrender or die, rabbit!"  Bugs responds by kissing the ground in front of his fort, and he doesn't even spit out the little bit of humus he got in his mouth or anything.  Whoa, dude.  Bugs is in Fight Mode all the way.  Bugs goes back inside and gets into costume as best he can.  He re-emerges from the fort, his ears tied back, with a blue army hat on his head, and a bayonetted rifle in his hand.  "Just try and take it!" Bugs tells Sam.  I remember a long time ago when an actual film critic pointed out how Bugs has this ... I hate to say Nationalist, but Bugs is nothing if not an American, and he is capable of embodying American values, even some historical ones to an extent.  I'm not doing it justice, of course.  But still I can't help but picture the Native Americans who might be watching this and just shaking their heads at this point.

ACT TWO

"Prepare to defend yourself, rabbit!" Sam tells Bugs.  Act Two begins.  A little early, but close enough to it.  The conflict has been set up, and now it's up to Sam to make his attempts to take Fort Bugs of Bagle Heights fame.
Sam goes down to ground level, opens the fortified They Fort door, and says "CHAAARRRRGE!"  The Closed-Captioning doesn't add all the extra letters.  Oh, how I pity the disabled who aren't able to enjoy the entire experience.  So, now that the brief truce is over, and Sam has said "CHAAAAARRRRGGGEEE!", what does he do for his opening salvo?  Why, he comes out with a drum, of course, and marches his ass over towards Fort We, of course!  Talk about bluster and pride!  Downright arrogant as well!  But the drums do sound good... sounds like more than one, anywho.
And now, for the first big laugh.  Without missing a beat, and to Sam's tempo, the wooden doow of Fort We flies open, and Sam gets blasted with a cannonball.  The dust settles, and Sam is of course, just a little worse for wear.  Covered in soot, clothes slightly in tatters, he quickens pace back to his fort.  His drum's lost a little of its luster as well, lol.
Sam closes the door to his fort, and fires about forty shots from his six guns.  Alas, we don't get to see how he manages all of this.  This isn't a Bob Clampett joint, you know!  Reminds me of the sound machine that Bugs uses to simulate the robbing of the 5:15... am I right or what?

SECOND ATTEMPT: Sam tries charging again, but this time with a rifle and bayonet.  Bugs responds in kind.  What happens next just might seem familiar to anyone who's played that game called Othello... you know, the one with the black and white circular game pieces.  For a brief moment, Sam seems to have both forts in his command, that is until Bugs' flag goes up over Sam's fort.  At least with Othello, there's some sense of progress, as the game board gets filled up.  No such luck here.
We see Sam tying his flag in place over in Bugs' fort, and happy as a clam to boot.  This is how Alexander must have felt at times.  "Yoo-hoo!  Mister Enemy!" says Bugs.  Sam looks over to see Bugs' flag.  Bugs definitely got the flag upgrade, if nothing else!  Look at the giant carrot on it and everything.  Anyway, at about 3:05 or so, we're treated to the long process of switching back over.  That'll stretch this affair out to one reel!
Now sure, Bugs could've been all mercenary about it and everything, and kept Sam's larger fort all to himself, but that's not Bugs' way.  This isn't a Disney cartoon, after all!  So Sam is now back in his fort.  He looks up and sees Bugs' flag again flying over Fort We.  "CHAARRRRGE!" says Sam again, and tries to keep this crazy train going.  Love the accent on the "ge" part of "CHARGE" on that one.
Bugs clearly needs to snap Sam out of it.  Bugs is calmly standing next to the wooden door of Fort We.  Sam is running full speed towards it.  Bugs swings open the door, and Sam ends up running into the barrel of a really big cannon, big enough that he doesn't even hit his head.  "RETREAT!" says Sam, and of course it's all echo-ey.  Cartoons aren't real, but they often try to be.  And just like the guy fumbling with the car keys in the zombie picture, Sam has a little trouble running out of the cannon in time.  With the slightest of sleight of hand, Bugs fires the cannon.  Surely he has an assistant or two!
Next scene: we see Sam flying back into Fort They, leaving a trail of thick grey smoke in his wake.  A sadder projectile you will not see.  When Sam lands back on the ground, he sets off a rather large explosion inside the walls of Fort They.  But it's still well into the middle of Act Two, so he'll survive to start another attempt.

THIRD ATTEMPT: Time for the old spherical black bomb.  Brought to you by Lindt and Sprungli... mmm.  Could go for a few of those right about now.  Sam chucks the lit bomb in Bugs' direction and... dayamn!  Look at that little fat boy throw!  Bugs has actually got a worried look on his face for a second there.  Acting quickly, Bugs goes for the... can you guess?  That's right!  The baseball outfit!  Bugs hits a home run, of course, and... well, needles to say, Bugs' enthusiasm rubs off on Sam.  Sam gets out his baseball glove and starts saying "I got it... I GOT IT!!!"  He runs back into the ultra-fortified walls of Fort They and... hmm!  Is that the same explosion from earlier?  To be fair, this time it fades out.
A white flag raises up Fort They's flagpole.  You'll never guess what it says.  Never in a million, cajillion years...

FOURTH ATTEMPT: "I'm a-gonna blow you to smithereenies!" threatens Sam, after regaining his composure (but not his wardrobe, still in tatters, and a little grey from the last explosion).  Any ordinary man would've given it up by now, but this is Sam von Schmamm the Hessian we're talking about, after all.  Now I hate to be negative, but after all the dozens of shots he's fired at Bugs, none of them seem to have hit either Bugs or his wooden fort!  I'm assuming the rules of Cartoon Health Care are... well, they're in effect for Yosemite, but Bugs doesn't like to waste money or time in the hospital.  He prefers to outwit his various nemeses.
"Ah, your brother blows bubble gum!" retorts Bugs.  Boy!  Mel Blanc wasn't kidding when the various filmmakers involved said that Bugs was a "little stinker."  Thank the dear Lord that Brooklyn and the Bronx don't usually team up.  They sound damn near unstoppable.
Anyway, what happens next ends up being a bit like... cannon pong?  For some reason, the phrase "swapping spit" comes to my mind.  Oh, the joys of mononucleosis.  Sam fires the first shot, of course, but he has a little trouble jamming the cannonball into the cannon.  But a few jumps up and down on top of it and down it goes!  That's what happens when you buy your cannonballs from Costco: they're always the wrong size, and you have to buy, like, 50 or 100 of 'em at once.  And apparently he doesn't need powder or a layer of wadding.  Neither does Bugs.  But that's Friz for you: keeping things simple, and focusing on the action.  The stupid, stupid action.
"That's the ol' pepper, Kid!" says Bugs.  My favourite is probably "Let's see whatcha got in the ol' cannonball, kid!"  Clearly Bugs is doing all the work here.  He has to maneuver his cannon to catch it when Sam fires it, and he stands behind the cannon to make sure the recoil doesn't make it fly off the wide platform it's on.  And thirdly, he has to break what is clearly a stalemate.  Bugs ain't goin' nowhere, Sam ain't goin' nowhere... and apparently, the cannonball in question ain't goin' nowhere!  You would think that any normal cannonball could only be fired once.  I myself go back to that old "Castle Wolfenstein" video game... particularly the 8-bit version where, if you made the mistake of shooting at an open chest of cannonballs, well... the explosion would not only end the game for you, and send you back down to the rank of Private, it would threaten to overheat your 8-bit computer and the 6502 chip therein... I'm assuming all this was covered at some point in "Halt and Catch Fire."  Or... Gilliam's 1988 disasterpiece about Baron Munchausen.  There.  Brought it full circle.
And so, Bugs ends the stalemate, because we've got cornier gags to get to yet.  Bugs fires the cannonball back at Sam.  We get a slightly different angle on the proceedings.  That's because Bugs fires over a giant cork to plug up Sam's cannon... damn!  This just gave eBay and or Amazon a new idea to save on transportation costs.  And so, Sam goes over to the cork, and eventually he pulls it out of the cannon and...

ACT THREE

FIFTH ATTEMPT: Time to leave the noisy world of cannon fire behind for a while... kind of relaxing, actually!  It's the proverbial "Digging to China" time for Sam.  As dictated by cartoon convention, Sam is a proficient digger of underground tunnels.  He doesn't even have to carry the dirt out of the tunnel in Hefty (TM) bags or anything!  No buttresses, no underground rail system with carts to speed up the digging, no pressurized water to hose down the dirt... this is 1776, mind you.  We just barely had train technology as it was!
Next scene: as we could see from the cutaway that exposed the underground earth where Sam was digging, he was heading in the general direction of Fort We (Bugs).  In the next scene, Sam starts to emerge from the ground.  We, of course, can see that he's digging his way into a small room full of explosives, much like the big finale of Friz's Oscar-winning masterpiece, Knighty Knight Bugs.  The principles of "movie night" apply even, perhaps especially, to cartoons... by that, I mean the use of a couple small spotlights in the dead of night to highlight a few important features of the landscape that we need to notice.  If it was just pure darkness, it wouldn't be as interesting.
Next scene: And so, Sam lights a match to light his way in this new world... well, it can seem like a new world if you've just spent the last few hours digging around underneath the surface like Sam has been.  Unfortunately, Sam's luck with matches is poor... and I submit the big fiery finale of Buccaneer Bugs as proof.  Next scene: an exterior shot of the "Explosives" room.  Note to future Sam: give the explosives room a concrete floor next time.  Might slow you down a little when you dig your way into the next one.  And to further add insult to injury, Sam seems to have tunneled back inside the walls of his own Fort They.  I don't recall Bugs' fort being so concretely fortified.  Also, love Carl Stalling's emphasis on the explosion.  Sam emerges from the now tattered "Explosives" room, dazed and sad.  His spirit is slowly being broken.  So far, he's either been perplexed or angry after getting blown up by a cannon.

SIXTH ATTEMPT: Oh, this cartoon is just not for kids.  While you can't tell from the background cels, it still seems to be the dead of night.  And now, Sam is tiptoeing around in his undershorts, fiddling around with a long length of fuse, and a giant barrel of gun powder.  Lol.  As you can see, the barrel has an informative rubric on it that says "Gun Powder."
Sam inserts part of the fuse into the gun barrel, and gets a mischievious grin across his face.  Oh, Bugs just doesn't know what he's in for.  Sam's reign of quiet terror continues!
Next scene: Sam quietly tiptoes from the threshold of Fort They and heads over to Bugs' place.  Why Sam would be content with having his fort called "They," I have no idea.  Must be part of that whole Hessian character, that seems to have gone the way of the Hittites or the Zoroastrians.  I know, I know, just because they come last in the dictionary doesn't mean they still don't exist, right along with Zuul worshippers.  Anyway, in what is clearly an ode to the rather strange Laurel and Hardy classic, Dirty Work, as Sam carries the barrel of gun powder, a second gun powder barrel begins to form in Sam's pants, as David Letterman might suggest, thanks to the overly aerated barrel Sam's carrying.
Sam is so filled with the joys of war that he doesn't notice that his pants are filled practically to the brim with that gun powder crap... I mean, that gun powder stuff.  Sam tiptoes back to the threshold of Fort They, and... yup, that's right.  He leaves in his wake a solid trail of gun powder.  Just think about that for a second... okay, on to the next.
Next scene: now, in the cartoon history of trying to blow out fuses, they traditionally do not go out.  I'm thinking of Tom Cat in ... The Yankee Doodle Cat?  The fuse on the tiny firecracker didn't go out because... well, frankly, he picked the whole tiny thing up and laughed at it.  In The Wacky Wabbit, Bugs shrugged and held onto a stick of TNT, but Bugs is a star and the stick of TNT knew that.  The rest of us wouldn't be so lucky.  Here, in Bunker Hill Bunny, Bugs is about a half step ahead of Sam, and there he is.  We see him sitting confidently, a big smug even, on top of the barrel with the giant rubric "GUN POWDER" on it.  And just before the spark is about to blow him sky high, Bugs wets his fingertips with his long yazzik and puts out the flame.  Esquire Magazine for Rabbits could get a whole years' worth of articles out of that single incident.
Now, for Bugs' next act... he takes a match and ignites Sam's trail of gun powder.  Even Fischli and Weiss wouldn't have this kind of luck; it would have to be deliberate.  Plus, Sam's the bad guy, so he of course has it coming. 
The spark eats up the trail of gun powder, and drowns out the Carl Stalling timpani that's trying to add dramatic tension to the affair.  Next scene: Sam looks on in curiosity at the approaching spark, then he slowly realizes it's about to blow him sky high.  At the last possible microsecond, Sam takes off running.  Next scene: Sam runs to Stage Right and leaves a fresh trail of gun powder.  The spark quickens pace to keep up with Sam, lol.  Sam then runs Stage Left, thereby conserving backgrounds.  The spark follows.  The pouch in Sam's undergarments is more full than ever.
Next scene: as happened either before or after, probably in another Friz joint, Sam disappears over the horizon, still leaving a black gun powder trail.  The spark follows.  Next scene: Sam finds an apple tree, and climbs up into it.  Surely the spark will find no quarter up a tree?  Note to future cartoon makers: have Sam run through a stream or a shallow brook!  Now that would be a challenge.

EPILOGUE

BOOM!  As you could see, the apple tree was perhaps half maple as well... some kind of tree that bleeds sap through its bark.  Gun powder could stick to that.  It's an explosion that only the most ardent horticulturist could take exception to.  Alas, tis not a terribly funny explosion.  No apple pies get created via cartoon entropy.  The explosion of Sam's bag of picnic food in Ballot Box Bunny is clearly funnier, but oh well.  It wasn't the last explosion to end the film, for one.
I failed to point out earlier that Bugs said that "no Hessian opression" was going to move him from his parcel of land.  After Sam gets blowed up real good, and we see him once again charred, clothes in tatters, we see his spirit broken once and for all... if only because it's the end of this one-reel cartoon.  Hanging from a branch by his tiny hands, Sam says "I'm a Hessian without no aggression."  We have officially come full circle.  But Sam isn't one to be out of the spotlight completely, so he adds the following codicil: "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!"  Next scene: with Bugs on flute, and Sam on drums, they march towards the "camera" together.  Now, I don't know if this is commensurate with the actual history of the time, but I do get the feeling that there are some ancient Hessian fortunes that have a stranglehold on prime upstate Connecticut real estate, for one.  Close enough.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Fabrice Eboué

The thing you must realize about Fabrice Eboué, first and foremost, is that he's French.  Very, very French.  But his is what a French résumé looks like when you don't work with Luc Besson.  Sure, he tried auditioning for the male lead in Angel-A, but just didn't get it, as so many others didn't.
Scarred by this experience, he yearned to be the director; the man in the chair, if you like.  Surely none of them ever feel pressure to perform at work, sitting there in their chairs.  And Fabrice had worked with his share of bad ones.  He looked at them and said, aw hell, even I could do that! 
And do he did.  Just the two so far, and sharing credit with an actual director, apparently.  Will he and Lionel Sketekee... Steketee, are they the new Powell and Pressburger?  The new Merchant and Ivory?  The team of Harmony Korine and... whatever pain meds he's currently taking?  Well, so far, there's no third collaboration planned.  Maybe we mere mortals don't get to hear about it just yet, but let's all hope it doesn't turn out to be another A Night Full of Rain!  PEEWWWWWW!!!!!  Oh, the stench of contractual obligation is one that don't wash off so easy-like, I tell you darlings.

The WTF

Speechless.  I can't even remember the last time Spielberg had a #1 hit.  Lord knows he doesn't need one, as he seems to be producing a few of them.  Jurassic World, for one.  I guess it was the latest and not-so-greatest installment of Indiana Jones that was #1, if only for old time's sake.  And, also, I coulda sworn for sure that Roland Emmerich's sequel to Independence Day would rise to the #1 spot... you know, because Independence Day's tomorrow and all that.  Not the case at all!
Well, Pixar's latest remains at #1, no surprise there... but Tarzan?  Really?  It's just one of those perennial roles, apparently.  And, of course, there's a short list of actors who can probably add to their C.V./résumé that they were considered for the role.  Like those who were considered for James Bond.  You know, Humanity's Finest.  The Best and The Brightest, the Bold and the Beautiful and what not... I guess young and restless goes without saying.  In this case, Stellan Skarsgard's kid.  And why shouldn't he be, damn it?  Handsome, and he's got an accent... I grow weary of it all.
Meanwhile, in horror movie news, coming in at #3 is the latest installment of The Purge, a series of movies based on the premise that, on one day out of the year, people are allowed to commit any crime and not be charged for it.  Particularly and especially murder.... you know what?  At least O.J. took his lumps and went through a trial!  For me, it's not that it doesn't speak well of our culture that a movie like that is #3 on the 4th of July weekend... it's that The Onion reviewer gives it a B-.  Not to mention the logistical nightmare for the police.  Do they still get to do the forensics and other investigations involved at a Purge-related crime scene anyway?  And what about crimes that happen the next day, but that get cleverly disguised as a Purge Day crime?  Apparently, the premise is clearly more seductive than, say, The Human Centipede.  Maybe MSNBC can do a breakdown of how many Trump supporters attended this movie... you know, to take good notes.  I guess we have our new Saw series!  May they squeeze seven or eight movies out of the whole thing, and get themselves a nice shrink-wrapped DVD/Blu-Ray package for the Costco market.
At #4, the marriage of Roald Dahl and Steven Spielberg is complete with The BFG which is apparently the book's actual title.  No, really!  One of my roommates just got a copy of Dahl's The Witches, and right there at the top of the list of his books was "The BFG."  Go figure.  Tim Burton and Danny DeVito have tinkered with Dahl's stuff, but I think it was too mean-spirited for Spielberg.  I'd be surprised if Matilda even got to Spielberg's desk, for one.  But when I first saw the BFG trailer, I couldn't help but think of Casper.  Similar situation: one good ghost, and three bastards.  Here, one good giant, a handful of bastard giants.  You just gotta have both the yin and the yang for your big time multi-million dollar multi-plex movie, as David Letterman might say.
In dead director news, Michael Cimino passed away.  I can imagine how Mickey Rourke feels about that, but I just don't wanna hear it.  I don't.

Short Reviews - July 2016

Man on the Moon - You know, "The Donald"'s run for the presidency reminds me of when Andy Kaufman tried to become a pro-wrestler.  Oh sure, the other pro-wrestlers pooh poohed the idea and all that, claiming that Kaufman lacked the bulk to really, truly be one of their ilk, but... I forget, did it turn out well?
---
The Astronaut Farmer - ...oh, that was her!  She played Vivica's best friend who goes up to the roof of the building anyway in the first Independence Day.

Bob Dylan: Don't Look Back - Okay, here's a cinephile's confession for you: when the part with Donovan came on, I confess I couldn't help but think to myself, why couldn't there be a film about Donovan?

"Bull" - I'm blissfully unaware of Michael Weatherly's work, but even I can't deny it: he's the new Stephen Collins.  We could use a new one, after all; the old one's getting a little pervy.

The Dark Crystal - You know, when I think about this year's presidential election, I can't help but think of the following line from The Dark Crystal... "But there is a prophecy.  A thousand years have passed, and now, once more, the world must undergo a time of testing.  Now it must be healed, or pass forever into the rule of evil."  Kinda feels like America's going to go for the latter this time.......................

Entertainment - Remake of The Dark Backward

A Fistful of Dynamite (aka Duck, You Sucker) - Recently seen on Turner Classic Movies, I believe it was, under the first title, A Fistful of Dynamite.  Now, I hate to do nothing but complain, but the Closed Captioning would come on about twenty seconds before the actual action and or line of dialogue.  Sure, not much to complain about during the sequence with very little dialogue, but what if they start doing a whole wild bunch of talking?  Nice going, MGM!  No wonder Columbia and Warner Bros. own large swaths of you now!

Frogs - Brought to you by MooFrog Creamery.  MooFrog Creamery!  The franchise that will leave you scratching your head, and wondering to yourself, "Why have frogs suddenly taken such an unhealthy interest in our dairy products?  So much so that they're using sagging costumes to try and pass themselves off as cows?"

Greasewood Flat - How many of these brothers are named Kieran?

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - I only caught the fiery finale of this one, but man.  It must be a pain in the ass being Harry Potter, with people always wanting stuff from you.  The Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone, the Prophecy, gimme gimme gimme all day long.  Stupid Muggles.  Also, I probably don't know any better, but Lord Voldemort is your hidden, uber-bad guy... seems like they brought him out too early.  Were they just trying to pad this out to seven films or what?

The Hidden (1987) - A close friend of mine was trying to figure out what sort of mental illness Donald Trump suffers from.  I mean, I think we can all agree that he's crazy.  You'd have to be to run for president, for one... but I couldn't help but think of the body-hopping, social-climbing ruthless alien from The Hidden, who, incidentally, ends up in the body of a politician running for president... sorry, spoiler alert.

I Am Wrath - Ah, yes.  Basically, John Travolta in Gran Torino.

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With - Jeff Garlin has just announced the sequel to be called I Want to Eat Cheese with Rebel Wilson

"Maya & Marty" - Now, maybe I'm biased, but it seems like Marty's doing all the heavy lifting.  Getting Steve Martin to come on, Seinfeld and Larry David... meanwhile, where the hell's Gwyneth?  I thought she and Maya were friends!

Mistress - Welp, another quasi-celebrity falls into the moral abyss of child pornography.  The first or second thing I thought to myself is, holy crap!  I saw that guy in Mistress!  Is some of this bad karma going to rub off on me?

Morgan - A more modern suitable case for treatment, but it seems a bit like Lucy.  Also, is this part of Kate Mara's penance for the Fantastic Four reboot?

Our Brand Is Crisis - Yeah, Spinning Boris called; wants its plot back

The Picasso Summer - This is playing on the TV in the other room, and the soundtrack makes it seem like a horror movie

Pretty Baby - With Keith Carradine as... BELLOCQ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Red Lights - Now Dana's the Ghostbuster!

The Spitfire Grill - Well, I'm going to use this meagre, obscure space to lodge a complaint against the cable Powers That Be on behalf of my cinephile friend who once made public his love for The Spitfire Grill.  Sure, maybe the cable Powers That Be think it's a piece of crap, but otherwise what's the problem?  Plenty of other Pieces of Crap being shown on cable these days!  Doesn't this piece of crap deserve the HD upgrade treatment?  Is there some kind of Piece of Crap union that it needs to pay unpaid dues to or something?  All due respect to unions, of course... I mean, they're showing Yellowbeard and Howard the Duck in revamped HD, for God's sake.  Lord knows they would hardly be described as iconic, not even ironically.  You're telling me no one else gets a turn in the HD sunlight?  Not even Spitfire?  A thumbs down forever from the emperors in the Colosseum?

Splendor in the Grass - Now I know what Katy Perry was singing about with her song, "The One that Got Away."  Of course, the one she shouldn't let get away is CoverGirl, or Revlon... whichever one she's the spokesperson for

The Street Fighter (aka The Streetfighter) - When you think of Hollywood, you tend not to think of things that are family run... at least, I don't usually.  But New Line Cinema, it's practically a family-run studio!  Okay, besides Aaron Spelling's company, but we watched the opening credits of The Street()Fighter tonight, and I saw the name Jack Sholder.  First, I thought, as I always do these days, no.  What's his real name?  (there was also a guy in the credits named 'King Stone.'  Puh-leeeeeze...)  And second, I thought, oh, right!  He also did The Hidden for New Line Cinema!  See what I mean?  Family run.

Transcendence - I ran across another delightful IMDb list.  Someone compiled a list of people they find annoying.  Of course, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are annoying, just not very cinematically so, thank goodness.  And then... Wally Pfister?  Really?  Seriously?  How... why... oh, I get it.  Gregory Dark must've compiled this list.

Transformers: Age of Extinction - In addition to the Razzie Awards, this film is now featured on an IMDb list of 26 films that made a billion dollars worldwide.  Of course, with ticket prices being what they are, that's only about 50,000 tickets actually sold.  I'd be more interested in the data about just the movie tickets, unaffected by the constant fluctuations of the various global currencies involved.  And that's another factor to consider: the globalization of the Hollywood cinema.  At some point, they invested in infrastructure, sometime in the '90s I think, and now we can learn how the latest superhero movie fared in Indonesia or Sierra Leone.  Incidentally, that's what the list is, mostly sequels and superhero movies.  Only one Harry Potter?  How's that work?  Sobchak-bots activate!

And finally, as we move on to the next month...

"Hogan's Heroes" - All the pundits, comedy or otherwise, are busy trying to nail down what Hillary's VP pick Tim Kaine or who he looks like.  A clown, the most boring guy ever since Mike Pence, the guy in the VP picture frame at Staples, what have you.  Guys and gals, please!  Let me save you all a bunch of trouble.  Tim Kaine is either a) the spitting image of Bob Crane, or

Marty - b) a ringer for Ernest Borgnine!  OR...

Double Indemnity - c) a ringer for Edward G. Robinson.  Pick one and run with it!