Red Nose

10 Top 10

We are watching AFI's 10 Top 10; they just finished the Sci-Fi category. The top 10 -- not in order here -- were:

• A Clockwork Orange
• Alien
• Terminator
• Star Wars
• ET
• The Day the Earth Stood Still
• Bladerunner
• Back to the Future
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind

The winner?

2001: A Space Odyssey

I saw 2001 when it first came out; I was in college. I remember seeing it (several times) in the university movie theater. You could tell exactly when someone started getting off on their particular sensory enhancement technique by the murmured exhalations of "Oh Wow..." that occurred as the movie progressed.

But The Costumes Were Great!

I have just finished watching the weirdest old movie on TCM that I've ever seen: Idiot's Delight, starring Clark Gable and Norma Shearer. It's one of those pre-World War II deals that can't decide whether it's a comedy or a serious message movie, or a romance set against the backdrop of war. Not only that, it can't decide whether the message is patriotic pro-war or anti-war. The acting deserves the William Shatner award for scenery chewing.

Clark Gable plays Harry Van, a vaudeville hoofer who hooks up with a strange woman (Norma Shearer, playing Irene) who's performing with an aerial act. She wants to join Harry in his mentalist act, and picks him up. They spend one night together, then split up. When next we meet Harry, he and his troupe of blondes are stranded at a seedy resort hotel on the Swiss border. With them are a motley crew of hotel guests, including Norma Shearer. This time she's all dolled up and accompanying a German arms dealer (I think). She's now posing as a Russian countess, and pretends not to know Harry.

Well -- all sorts of antics ensue with the motley crew (heh), including anti-war rants from Burgess Meredith, and a strange version of Puttin' On The Ritz with Clark and the blondes. Finally the war starts, and of course everyone has to escape.

Except there's a problem with Norma Shearer's passport, so the Germans won't let her leave. Clark gets in the bus with the blondes, but of course! He comes back, because true love is like that.

Now it gets really confusing. The bombs start dropping, and the hotel gets hit (collateral damage; the bombers are really going after the air base at the foot of the mountain). Clark and Norma decide they don't want to die in the cellar, so they stay in the lobby.

Now -- the movie has two endings, and TCM showed them both. In the first ending, Clark and Norma talk about how they're going to do the mentalist act now, it's going to be great, it'll play all over the world, and then another bomb shatters the window. So they decide to sing a hymn.

Yes. A hymn. Clark sits at the piano, and together they sing Nearer My God to Thee. And miracle or miracles, the bombing stops!

In the second ending, they're talking about the act, blah blah blah, bomb shatter window, but they keep on talking about the act, getting more and more excited about it, and then they sing a lively vaudeville ditty. They've realized that they love each other madly, and then! Miracle of miracles, the bombing stops.

My mind, however, is still boggling.

Au Revoir, Marcel

Marcel Marceau, the famed mime, has died at age 84. I'm guessing he died quietly.

Eeeee-YAH!

We saw Ratatouille today.

We loved it.

I really like Pixar's approach, their sense of humor, all the wonderful details they embed into the picture. I also love the short subjects they always have before the main event; they're a wonderful little bit of lagniappe to whet your appetite.

The short subject was titled Lifted and it totally cracked us up. It reminded me of a classic animated short from my college days called Bambi Meets Godzilla. Anyone out there remember it? Or am I experiencing a hallucinatory flashback? (Not that I ever did anything that would cause a hallucinatory flashback. Not me. Oh no.)

Where was I? Oh, right.

Anyway, the thing that really cracked us up occurred at the very very end of the short -- it was The Wilhelm Scream. Joe being Joe, he can hear it even when it's completely embedded in the surrounding sound. It's not quite a scream; not quite a gargle. It's kind of a combination of both -- in fact, the original soundtrack was labeled "Man being eaten by alligator." Come to think of it, that's really pretty close. Not that I have any experience with men being eaten by alligators, mind you, but the sound seems to have the appropriate strangulated quality to it.

Give a listen:

Alligator? Or something else? What does it sound like to you?

PS: Yay! Bambi Meets Godzilla is on YouTube!

Quit Killing People, Stone Cold Steve Austin

You know that Joe was a hero during my protracted bout with the Runnin' Shits, right?

How to repay him for his care and tenderness, his willingness to buy me Immodium and Italian Ice, his mad cleaning skillz? (Really, there's nothing hotter than a man in rubber gloves toting a spray bottle of Resolve.)

I'll tell you how. Go - with nary a complaint or whine - to see Stone Cold Steve Austin in The Condemned.

Considering what it is - a violent action movie jam packed with cliches and plot holes - it wasn't entirely sucktastic. You know how that goes, right?

They stretched out an hour-long plot into a two-hour movie with plenty of explosions, lots of muscles, and a thick coating of mud and blood. Stone Cold Steve Austin played a convicted murderer, except he wasn't a convicted murderer, he was a government agent who only killed really bad bad guys. The really bad bad guys all died horrible deaths, the morally wishy-washy guy died a horrible death, the sleazy bitch died a horrible death, the morally corrupt crew died horrible deaths, and the uber-bad guy died a particularly gruesome and horrible death.

Stone Cold's girlfriend with the two kids under 6 who needed no care looked appropriately horrified and sorrowful as she watched Stone Cold apparently die two or three different horrifying deaths (but not really); the uber-bad guy's girlfriend who developed a conscience looked appropriately horrified and disgusted and avoided dying a horrible death. The coldhearted government agents recovered their own consciences just in time to give Stone Cold a lift home, and the journalist lectured everyone on the immorality of what they were watching. It all ends with a smile.

And?

I got the Senior Citizen's discount on my ticket. Talk about condemned!

Shaken AND Stirred

We went to see Casino Royale this weekend, and oh holy dear sweet Jesus, Daniel Craig as James Bond is hot.

Oh my yes, hellooooooo nurse!

Honestly, I like the movie a lot. It was quite clever, even from the opening scene. The action scenes were impossibly exciting, the coincidences far fetched and wonderful, the bad guys (and gals) were numerous, and I enjoyed every minute.

But over and above it all, I definitely approve of Mr. Craig as Mr. Bond. He's grittier, not nearly as urbane and polished as Mr. Connery and Mr. Brosnan (the only other two who count), earthier, and damn, combine those icy blue eyes with that smokin' hot bod (nearly all of which you get to see) and that there's a recipe for movie magic, let me tell you.

But the best line? Judi Dench had it, in my opinion, right at the beginning of the movie. She's storming down the hall, angry at Bond and the political situation in the world, when she says in total exasperation, "Jesus Christ! I miss the cold war!"

Go M!

You Go, Girl!

Weddings always make me feel a little mushy, and I particularly enjoyed the announcement of this one in today's Washington Post:

Gina Lollobrigida, 79, one of the great bombshells of all time, is finally tying the knot in Rome with her boyfriend of 22 years, Javier Rigau y Rafols, 45.

I did the distraction (you know, one of the four arithmetic functions: aggravation, distraction, uglification, and derision). They met in Monte Carlo when she was 57 and he was 23.

Way to go, Gina!

Evidently they were going to get married later this month in New York, but so many friends from Spain and Italy wanted to attend the wedding that they postponed it until next year so that they could get married in Rome.

The Giant Grasshopper

  The Giant Grasshopper 
  Originally uploaded by Bozoette.

So we're just sitting around in the living room, vegged out in front of the tube, watching something or other, when SPLAT!

We look in the direction of the sound, and there it was: a big old grasshopper had landed on the door.

I haven't seen a grasshopper in years, especially one as big as this one was -- it was a good three inches long! When I was a kid, the grasshoppers used to appear every year in late August. We'd make a point of messing with them, touching their back legs to make them jump, catching them and holding them to try to get them to "spit tobacco juice", collecting them in jelly jars. The cat -- whichever one it happened to be at the time -- used to eat them, leaving only the legs.

Anyway, here was this big old grasshopper hanging out on the door. Joe got this crazed look on his face and intoned, "The Beginning of The End."

And I looked at him weirdly, for I had no idea why he was intoning this phrase.

I should have known, or at least guessed.

It's a horror movie, featuring giant grasshoppers that take over the world. You know, one of those bug-eyed monster flicks that end with the words "THE END?"  and where the creatures are created by radiation and only live to KILL.

I have got to see this movie, if only because of the publicity that states that it's so big they had to create a word for it: NEWMENDOUS! Now that's just a fuckin' great word.

And who knows? This grasshopper might well be an escapee from a mad scientist's laboratory. I mean, there were no others. He was a renegade grasshopper. A lone grasshopper, an angry grasshopper --

A newmendous grasshopper!

I Want To Believe It's Magic

We saw The Illusionist yesterday, a new movie starring Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, and Jessica Biel. It's a lost-love-found and bad-guys-subverted-in-clever-ways plot, with elements of The Shawshank Redemption and The Usual Suspects. The acting is excellent, the costumes gorgeous, the cinematography perfect.

But that's not why I loved it. I loved it for the magic.

I know a little bit about magic -- the magic of sleight-of-hand manipulation, the magic of big illusions. I can do a bad rendition of The French Drop, which is one of the most basic sleight-of-hand tricks you can do. I can pull a quarter out of your ear, but it works best on little kids who don't know what I'm doing.

When you go to a magic shop, you don't pay for the prop; you pay for the knowledge, the secret behind the trick. I bought a few little magic tricks to add to my clown repertoire -- a floating cane, a rope that changes color -- but I never got very good at doing them. And I was far too lazy to become a good sleight artist.

I never lost my love of magic, though. Sleight-of-hand is my favorite. Up close and personal, no machinery but the human hand and the art of misdirection. I love watching it. I love being amazed by it. I don't want to know the answer.

I love the great magicians. I wish I could have seen Houdini. I have seen David Copperfield and Ricky Jay and Penn and Teller live. David Copperfield did great, great illusions. During the finale of his show, he made it snow throughout the arena. Ricky Jay (and his 52 assistants) did mindboggling card manipulation, from guessing the card you had in your hand to completely controlling the outcome of a poker hand. Penn and Teller, although they do tell you how some things are done, keep enough unknown to send you away shaking your head.

So the illusions in the film grabbed me and didn't let me go. I don't even care if some were CGI and special effects. I loved it anyway.

Maybe because I prefer to believe in magic.

---

PS: The haircut's great! And I apologize to everyone who has the helmet cut or the triangular sideburns. It's not that I don't like them -- I don't like them on me. I love them on you!

Haiku Review

Last weekend Arianne complete Blogathon! I sponsored her effort, so I checked in periodically to cheer her on. We ended up exchanging several haiku. Combine that haiku-liciousness with the fact that I've been to several movies lately, and you get:

Movie Review Haiku: five movies; five reviews of five, seven, five syllables!

The Devil Wears Prada
This movie would be
Annoying as a wedgy
Without Meryl Streep.

A Prairie Home Companion
Laugh out loud funny
Even with hot angel of death
Jokes, songs, and Guy Noir.

Scoop
At last -- he's funny
Again! Woody, Scarlett, hunky
Hugh -- delightful Scoop.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Johnny Depp: Yummy!
Otherwise, two and a half
Hours of rotten teeth.

Clerks II
Disgusting, profane
Hilarious, oddly sweet.
Fuck! I loved Clerks II.