Leslie Nielsen (1925-2010)

I really don't know what to say. I knew he didn't have much longer, but this is still a shock.

Like a lot of people my age, I grew up knowing him from the many (perhaps too many) spoofs he appeared in. I honestly considered posting something from one of these films, as well as clips of his rare villain roles (Creepshow, Day of the Animals), but I think the man deserves some dignity, don't you?



Surely, you don't think he'll be missed? Of course, he'll be missed, and don't...oh, you know how it goes.

"Seven. Always seven."

Well, dog my cats. It was finally posted. I had planned on watching it on DVD, but, all the same, it's nice to know that this sketch is up:



I'm headed to my sister's for Thanksgiving dinner. Can't promise that I won't eat too much.

Notes...on a scandal.

As I've made fairly clear, I love film music and, on top of the CD releases I have yet to buy, specialty labels are putting out titles faster than I can drool over them.

The next few days will see releases from Varese, Intrada and La La Land, in that order. Such a confluence has inspired me to post about it.

Of the regular CD releases, I still have yet to obtain Leap Year, Brooklyn's Finest, Kick-Ass, Iron Man 2, Knight and Day, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Salt, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Piranha 3D, Megamind and Unstoppable.

As far as specialty releases, I still need to get White Dog, Outland, Yellowbeard, Red Sonja, Haunted Honeymoon, Conan the Barbarian and North Dallas Forty. (This is but a mere surface scratching of the aforementioned multitude of releases.)

Of course, this would be the time of year to be shopping for Christmas gifts.

Varese Club - 4:01am

Home Movies (One of the rare Donaggio comedy scores and a damn fine one. Its 1000-unit run is extra incentive to get it.)

The Karate Kid (One of Conti's seminal scores...but given the $60 dollars I dropped on the box set of all four KK scores from a few years ago, I'm gonna have to leave this alone.)

Taps (Not a bad sounding score from the clips I've heard, but nothing's grabbing me.)

Family Plot (A lot of people have been waiting for this and the clips sound interesting...so I'll wait until it's on the verge of selling out to make my move.)

Intrada - 9:03pm

First Blood (Over the last year, this has climbed over several other scores to nestle itself in my top five favorite Goldsmith scores. Thankfully, it's an unlimited release, so I can bide my time, and hopefully, the little extras that accompany this new version will be worth my while.)

Black Sea Raid (Never heard of the film, which sounds like it would've been perfect fodder for Action Pay Per View*. However, any of this label's special releases of a Richard Band or a Terry Plumeri score are automatic buys for me. This title - from the latter - doesn't sound quite as impressive as his Scarecrows.)

* - Damn, I'm old.

La La Land - 6:36pm

Jade (Widely regarded as one of James Horner's weakest scores, yet here it is at 3000 units, or, at least, it will be come Tuesday. Legend has it that Horner and director William Friedkin didn't see eye-to-eye and that the composer wrote a deliberately bad score to cheese the director off. The late Jerry Goldsmith once said something about people collecting CDs like bottlecaps. Mission accomplished.)

Batman Returns (Now, this is more like it! A fine companion piece to this year's release of Batman...and from the same label, yet. I'll definitely be picking this one up. Bonus: no worse-than-retarded placement of the track listings!)

Star Trek V: the Final Frontier (I'd have preferred a release of the complete soundtrack to The Motion Picture...but many people speak highly of this effort, so, maybe I'll give it a shot.)

Home Alone (Wait, what?)

Helpful tip: when you've skipped dinner, the only thing worse than glancing at menus is glancing at menus while watching a "South Park" episode revolving around food.

"How many men you seein', today?"

There's a scene in Hudson Hawk that comes to mind: Hawk (Bruce Willis) and Tommy Five-Tone (Danny Aiello) have just taken the Sforza from the museum. They're cornered on the roof by one of the guards. Given that the guard is trigger-happy, they figure (taking a leaf from Van Halen) they might as well jump (jump!). The two men fall from the building. The audience is on the edge of their seats; surely, they wouldn't kill off the hero and his sidekick this early in the piece...then the very next scene shows Hawk landing comfortably in a recliner in Gates' apartment. No explanation is ever made for how we got from the building to the apartment. (A moment like this could, justifiably, be seen as a dealbreaker for most moviegoers. Not me, however.)

Imagine a movie like this, lurching from one scene to another with little (if any) explanation and you might get Jonah Hex. True to my prediction, this film wasn't that bad. Thanks to my store's Redbox (and a free coupon; the film co-stars Megan Fox and a man without principles is a man with nothing), I rented the film.

It must be said that Josh Brolin is the glue that (albeit barely) holds the movie together. One could certainly believe he was acting in a more cohesive "Jonah Hex" movie. John Malkovich was okay as Turnbull, though not quite as persuasive as, say, Cyrus the Virus in Con Air. Despite her flat delivery, Megan Fox neither ruins nor improves the film.

One of the bigger surprises is the wealth of familiar names in bits, like Michael Shannon, Aidan Quinn, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett (you will do a double-take when you see him) and, apparently, Jeffrey Dean Morgan (who I only learned was in the film from checking the film's IMDB page).

All in all, a decent guilty pleasure; nothing you have to see or miss.

"After the feature..."

I went to see Megamind today. The film was entertaining, but a big surprise awaited me at the very end. No, not one of those after the credits bits like in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but another trailer!

I'm willing to bet that this was some kind of accident on the part of the projectionist, but, at long last, I now know what the people who saw the bumpers (at 0:12 and 0:22) felt:



This totally reminds me of that 'why I love going to the movies' post I keep putting off.

Late last night, I stayed up writing a script for a mock trailer. I have no idea who to send it to (no friends, no connections), but I just wrote it.

I wonder if Funny or Die might be interested or if they're too insular.

A Due Date to miss...

No, I haven't seen this film...and, frankly, I don't care to. Much in the spirit of my spiel against I Love You, Beth Cooper, I'm just going to eviscerate what looks to be one of the worst films of the season, Due Date.

What happened here? Unlike Blech Cooper, there was actually some promise behind this one: a fine cast, a director of significant talent. So, what went wrong? The first joke of the first trailer said it all: Peter (Robert Downey, Jr.) tells of how his father abandoned him when he was a boy. It's a touching moment that hints at the film's obvious-yet-admirable aspirations to be this generation's Planes, Trains and Automobiles...then we are treated to wheezing laughter from Peter's traveling companion, Ethan (Zach Galifianakis), who responds with the now-classic line, "Oh, man. My dad would never do that. He loved me." Wow. Talk about sucking the air out of the room.

The trailer only gets worse from there. What it essentially boils down to is a road-trip movie chock-full of forced, madcap wackiness, mainly at the hands of Galifianakis, who, here, is less the off-kilter manchild of The Hangover and more...Peter Griffin with a beard; a possibly sociopathic, possibly retarded (though the guy seems to be drawn so slimly, who the fuck can tell?) character living in his own little world, immune to the destruction and discomfort he causes to others*. There's a surplus of pissholes like this in the real world that I can see for free, so why would I pluck down hard-earned to see one?!

I appreciate Robert Downey Jr. wanting to do a comedy in-between his franchise films, but surely there were better scripts on the pile than this one. And Zach Galifianakis...just to get it out of the way, I'm not one of those Ain't-It-Cool-News boors who hates/is sick of the guy. I think he's hilarious. His Comedy Central stand-up special. His star-making turn in The Hangover. Hell, even his bits in Bubble Boy and (especially) Out Cold. He can be funny, something I haven't seen in a single clip of this movie.

(If I am to understand what I've heard correctly - and why would people on the internet lie? - it was suggested that Galifianakis was the main person responsible for ousting Mel Gibson from a cameo spot in the forthcoming The Hangover 2. As has been mentioned quite a bit, the guys had no problem letting Mike Tyson - a convicted rapist - appear in the first movie, and word is, he's cameoing in the sequel. It does seem a little hypocritical...until one remembers that rape victims don't run Hollywood. Tell me I'm wrong.)

Jamie Foxx is in this too, playing an old friend of Peter's (and a part of the one thing about the trailer I found funny - the drainage ditch scene). His involvement in this film actually has me looking forward to that project where he'd play Wanda (from "In Living Color") to Martin Lawrence's Shenehneh (from "Martin"). After all, there's nowhere to go but up. Also, according to Den of Geek, he only seems to be around to set up a sight gag at the film's end. For this plot wrinkle, why am I reminded of Naked Gun 33 1/3?

Speaking of wasting talent, Michelle Monaghan is on hand as Peter's wife. Apparently (re: the aforementioned Den of Geek review), she has nothing to do here and only shares a brief scene with Downey. As a fan of 2005's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, this will not stand. The prospect of seeing Downey and Monaghan together again on screen ought to fill me with elation, not contempt, but that's just what happened here.

In fact, I get the sense that this film will outdo KKBB's total gross in one weekend ($4.2 million, BTB). In the (unfortunately likely) event that this happens, let me just say something to those people who see and enjoy this dreck: You tasteless cunts do not deserve a movie like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

And to continue with the "Suck my cock, Due Date!" motif of this post, I will be watching a double feature of Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Tommy Boy this weekend, showing that there can be a right way to executing this premise.

* - And I really didn't care for the reenactment of the 'Neal blows up at Del' scene on that one "Family Guy" with Peter as Del; even in the 'it's just a reference' context of the scene, I found that truly offensive. This isn't quite off-topic as one would think.

"I ate a mint, before. You're fine."

As I mentioned last year, I had a blast while watching the incredible guilty pleasure Sorority Row. Despite its ungodly redesign/absorption by Moviefone, Cinematical had a nice write-up about it under the heading 'Defending Bad Movies'.

Also, I was hoping to find it on cable, but it was a Summit release and Showtime owns that license now. It was essentially a crapshoot between Showtime and Epix (which I don't have). Imagine my surprise when I checked the TV listings (as is my wont) and, lo and behold, I find it on Showtime Beyond! I'm watching it right now! What a nice surprise.

Granted, the temperature is dipping, but, really, how the hell did November get here so fast?!

Also, I swear to God, I thought daylight savings ended on Sunday, but it's this Sunday, the first one of November. Again, how did that happen?!